UNIVERSITY  of  CALIFORNIA 

AT 

LOS  ANGELES 

LIBRARY 


THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  IDEA 


THE  COLE  LECTURES 

igib 

The  Foundation  of  Modern 
Religion 

By  Herbert  B.  Workman,  D.  D.      Cloth Net  1.25 

Winning  the  World  for  Christ 

By  Bishop  Walter  R.  Lambuth.     Cloth net  1.15 

igi4 

Personal  Christianity 

By  Bishop  Francis  J.  McConnell.     Cloth net  1.25 

'9'3 

The  God  We  Trust 

By  G.  A.  Johnston  Ross.      Cloth net  1.25 

igi2 

What  Does  Christianity  Mean  ? 

By  W.  H.  P.  Faunce.     Cloth net  1.25 

igil 

Some  Great  Leaders  in  the 
World  Movement 

By  Robert  E.  Speer.      Cloth net  1.25 

igio 

In  the  School  of  Christ 

By  Bishop  William  Fraser  McDowell.    Cloth,  net  1.2s 
igog 

Jesus  the  Worker 

By  Charles  McTyeire  Bishop,  D.  D.     Cloth,  net  1.2s 

igoS 

The  Fact  of  Conversion 

By  George  Jackson,  B.  A.    Cloth net  1.2s 

igoy 

God's  Message  to  the  Human  Soul 

By  John    Watson    (Ian  Maclaren).      The  Cole  [.Cihires 
prepared  but  nol  delivertd.      Cloth net   1.25 

/go6 
Christ  and  Science 

Fly  Francis  Henry  Smith,  University  of  Virginia. 
Cloth _ net  1.25 

^9"S 

The    Universal    Elements  of  the 
Christian  Religion 

By  Charles  Cuthbert  Mall.     Cloth net   1.2s 

/goj 

The  Religion  of  the  Incarnation 

By  Hishop  hugcnc  Ru";srll  llondrix.     Cloth. ..net    1.00 


The    Cole    Lectures  for  jgiy 

ddi-vered  before  Vanderbih  Uni'versity 


The  North  American  Idea 


By 

JAMES  A.  MACDONALD,  LL.  D. 


New  York  Chicago  Toronto 

Fleming     H.     Revell     Company 

London  and  Edinburgh 


102473 


>  >  J  J 


Copyright,  19 17,  by 
FLEMING  H.  REVELL  COMPANY 


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«        «       « •%< 
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•  «  •  * 


THE  COLE  LECTURES 

THE  late  Colonel  E.  W.  Cole  of  Nashville,  Ten- 
nessee,  donated  to  Vanderbilt  University  the  sum 
of  five  thousand  dollars,  afterwards  increased  by 
Mrs.  E.  W.  Cole  to  ten  thousand,  the  design  and  con- 
ditions of  which  gift  are  stated  as  follows  : 

"  The  object  of  this  fund  is  to  establish  a  foundation 
for  a  perpetual  Lectureship  in  connection  with  the  Bib- 
lical Department  of  the  University,  to  be  restricted  in  its 
scope  to  a  defense  and  advocacy  of  the  Christian  re- 
ligion. The  lectures  shall  be  delivered  at  such  inter- 
vals, from  time  to  time,  as  shall  be  deemed  best  by  the 
Board  of  Trust ;  and  the  particular  theme  and  lecturer 
shall  be  determined  by  nomination  of  the  Theological 
Faculty  and  confirmation  of  the  College  of  Bishops  of 
the  Methodist  Episcopal  Cliurch,  .South.  Said  lecture 
shall  always  be  reduced  to  writing  in  full,  and  the  man- 
uscript of  the  same  shall  be  the  property  of  the  Univer- 
sity, to  be  published  or  otherwise  disposed  of  by  the  Bo.ird 
of  Trust  at  its  discretion,  the  net  proceeds  arising  there- 
from to  be  added  to  the  foundation  fund,  or  otherwise 
used  for  the  benefit  of  the  Biblical  Department." 


Kew  York:  is8  Fifth  Avenue 
Chicago:  17  North  Wabash  Ave. 
Toronto:  25  Richmond  Street,  W. 
London:  21  Paternoster  Square 
Edinburgh:      100    Princes    Street 


< 


V 


I 


A  FOREWORD 

T  was  inevitable  that  the  Cole  Lectures 
rv      I     for  191 7  should  carry  the  accent  and  the 
atmosphere  of  the  Time  of  War. 
These  Lectures  were  delivered  under  the 
'\^    auspices  of  the  School  of  Religion  of  Vander- 
bilt  University,  in  Nashville,  Tennessee,  dur- 
ing the  six  days  that  closed  April  and  opened 
I        May.     That  was  the  historic  week  when  the 
NO'     British  Mission  and  the  French  Mission,  led 
by  the  Right  Hon.  Arthur  Balfour  and  Mar- 
shall Joffre,  were  foregathering  in  Washing- 
ton with  President  Woodrow  Wilson  and  his 
Cabinet,   and    were    making    history   more 
memorable,     more     crammed     with     world 
events,  than  their  three  world  nations  ever 
knew  before. 

During  those  very  days,  the  undergradu- 
ates of  Vanderbilt,  all  the  men  fit  for  war, 
were  mustering  on  their  campus  and  were 
marching  away  to  their  training-camps,  their 

5 


6  A  FOREWORD 

American  hearts  filled  with  a  new  emotion, 
and  their  eyes  aflame  with  the  strange  light 
flashed  back  from  the  trenches  in  France  and 
Flanders.     The  war  accent  was  inevitable. 

More  than  that.  (The  war  touch  came 
nearer  still.)  The  very  title  of  this  volume, 
"  The  North  American  Idea,"  was  chosen  for 
the  Weil  Lectures  of  1916,  in  the  University 
of  North  Carolina,  and  was  first  used  for 
three  Lectures  on  that  Foundation,  which  I 
had  the  honour  of  delivering  before  that 
University  in  December  of  last  year.  It  was 
planned  that  those  lectures  should  be  pub- 
lished at  the  time  of  their  delivery.  But  war 
conditions  made  that  impossible.  Early  in 
191 7,  with  the  generous  consent  of  the  au- 
thorities of  both  universities,  I  substituted 
"The  North  American  Idea"  for  the  title 
previously  chosen  for  the  Cole  Lectures  at 
Vanderbilt. 

Personally  it  would  be  to  me  very  agree- 
able to  have  been  associated  with  President 
Graham  and  his  colleagues  of  North  Carolina 
in  the  publication  of  those  Lectures.  But, 
now  that  events  changed  so  suddenly  and  so 


A  FOREWORD  ^ 

completely  the  whole  American  situation, 
setting  free  the  North  American  idea  from 
the  hesitations  and  the  discords  which  the 
neutraHty  of  the  United  States  had  imposed 
on  the  free  expression  of  the  North  American 
mind,  most  grateful  am  I  that,  even  at  the 
last  moment,  with  the  very  opening  of  the 
Lectureship,  the  horizon  line  of  "  The  North 
American  Idea"  was  so  widened  that  its 
view-point  was  put  into  complete  harmony 
with  the  spirit  of  Canada  and  with  the 
achievement  of  North  America's  interna- 
tionalism. 

The  confusions  of  party  politics,  on  both 
sides,  sometimes  made  it  seem  as  though 
there  could  be  no  supreme,  dominant,  and 
united  North  American  idea.  But  those  dif- 
ferences were  only  on  the  surface.  Those 
discords  were  but  for  the  moment.  In  the 
deepest  note  there  is  harmony.  Two  na- 
tions: in  their  expanding  democracy  the 
United  States  and  Canada  are  true  to  one 
ideal.  Two  flags :  the  battle-fields  of  Europe 
are  consecrated  by  the  poured-out  blood  of 
their  own  people.     Two  records  :  in  the  long 


8  A   FOREWORD 

days  yet  to  come,  these  two  democracies,  and 
all  the  free  democracies  whose  prayers  mingle 
on  the  great  altar-stairs  of  the  World  War, 
will  join  together  in  writing  one  new  record, 
the  harmonious  record  of  the  World  Idea. 

If  these  Lectures  in  their  printed  form 
meet  with  a  tithe  of  the  purposeful  cordiality 
that  greeted  their  spoken  words,  they  will 
not  miss  their  mark,  nor  leave  the  real  pur- 
pose of  their  author  unrewarded. 

J.  A.  Macdonald. 
"  The  Globed'  Toronto. 


Contents 

LECTURE  I 
The  Law  of  the  World's  Good- Will     .       1 1 

What  Makes  the  Apples  Fall  ? 

The  Law  of  Human  Society. 

Law  is  Law. 

Law  is  Not  Broken. 

Good-Will  Holds  True. 

God  is  Not  Mocked. 

The  Organic  Life  of  Society. 

"  Not  Coesar  But  Christ !  " 

The  Voice  of  Tennyson. 

LECTURE  II 

In  the  World  Conflict  of  Ideas    .        .      43 

The  Supremacy  of  Ideas. 
Ideas  in  Conflict. 
Sources  of  America's  Ideas. 
The  Coming  of  Russia. 
America  Follows  the  Gleam. 
An  Internationalized  World. 
The  Prepared  Mind. 


LECTURE  III 
The  North  American  Idea      ,        •        •      6y 

The  Idea's  Opportunity. 
Its  World  Reach. 
The  Birth  of  the  Idea. 
The  Idea  in  Conflict. 
The  Lesson  of  the  Conflict. 


lO  CONTENTS 

LECTURE  IV 

The  North  American  Idea  in  the  Amer- 
ican Republic         •         •         •         •       95 

America's  Inheritance  From  Britain. 

The  Voice  of  Chatham. 

Confusion  in  the  Colonies. 

The  Strain  of  the  Celt. 

"  Liberty  Point." 

The  Motive  of  the  Scots. 

The  Moral  Reaction. 

Time's  Revenges. 

The  Significance  of  the  Past. 

The  Aftermath  of  Revolution. 

Pan-Germanism  in  America. 

Bernhardi's  Secret  Mission. 

Bernstorff  s  Treason  to  Honour. 

LECTURE  V 

The  North  American  Idea  in  the  Cana- 
dian Dominion       .        .        .        .155 

The  Coming  of  Canada. 

American  Questions  About  Canada's  Politics. 

Canada's  First  Half-Century. 

Canada  and  the  Britisli  Commonwealth. 

Commonwealth — Not  Imperium. 

Symbol  of  the  People's  Power. 

LECTURE  VI 

The  North  American  Idea  in  America's 

Internationalism  .         .         .         .183 

North  America's  Internationalism. 

The  Last  Anglo-American  War. 

The  Reflex  From  Europe. 

A  Hundred  Years  After. 

America  :  Vision,  Message,  Obligation. 

Lord  Palmerston  as  a  World-Projihet. 

World  Democracy  for  World  Liberty. 

The  Faith  ]5asis  of  International  Reconstruction. 

North  America  iu  the  World's  War. 

Service  :  the  Key-Notfi  of  Democracy. 

Crowned  for  Service. 


LECTURE  I 

THE     LAW    OF    THE 
WORLD'S  GOOD-WILL 


LECTURE  I 

THE  LAW  OF  THE  WORLD'S 
GOOD-WILL 

SITTING  at  the  window  in  my  office  at 
The  Globe  in  Toronto  one  day,  I  was 
attracted  by  a  man  at  work  on  the 
windows  of  the  top  story  of  the  Dominion 
Bank  building  across  the  street.  He  was  a 
window  cleaner.  He  had  a  wide  strap  se- 
curely buckled  around  his  waist,  and  firmly 
fastened  to  a  girder  inside.  He  moved  about 
the  window  ledge  with  the  utmost  care.  He 
took  no  chances,  either  for  himself  or  for  the 
passers-by  on  the  pavement  sixteen  stories 
below. 

A  newsboy  came  into  my  office  with  the 
evening  papers.  I  asked  him  why  the  man 
at  the  window  was  so  particular. 

"  He  can't  afford  to  make  any  mistake, 
sir,"  said  the  boy.  "  A  man  made  a  mistake 
two  or  three  years  ago.  His  strap  broke, 
and  he  was  an  awful  mess  on  the  sidewalk." 

13 


14  THE  NORTH   AMERICAN   IDEA 

"  But  why  should  he  fall  downward  ? "  I 
asked.  "Why  not  fall  upward,  or  stay 
still?" 

"  Things  don't  fall  up,  they  fall  down,"  said 
the  boy ;  and  he  began  to  recite  something 
the  teacher  at  the  night  school  had  taught 
about  what  he  called  "  the  law  of  gravita- 
tion." 

What  Makes  the  Apples  Fall 

There  you  have  it.  Things  don't  fall  up. 
They  fall  down.  They  always  do.  They 
always  did.  The  apples  fell  down  and  not 
up  when  Adam  and  Eve  first  saw  apples  in 
Eden.  And  when  Isaac  Newton  sat  in  his 
orchard  he  saw  the  ground  littered  with 
fallen  apples. 

•'  What  makes  the  apples  fall  ?  "  was  the 
question  with  which  Newton  disturbed  the 
scientific  world  two  hundred  and  fifty  years 
ago.  And  he  pursued  that  question,  and  he 
pondered  the  phenomenon  that  things  al- 
ways fall  downward  to  the  earth,  and  not 
upward  to  the  sky,  until  he  began  to  ap- 
preciate the  fact  and  the  force  of  universal 


LAW   OF  THE  WORLD'S   GOOD-WILL      1 5 

gravitation  as  a  law  in  the  physical  world. 
He  saw  that  it  was  not  by  accident  or  by 
chance  that  apples  always  fell  downward  and 
that  water  always  runs  down  hill.  What 
Prof.  George  Paxton  Young  used  to  de- 
scribe to  his  students  of  philosophy  at  the 
University  of  Toronto  in  my  undergraduate 
days  as  "  the  occurrence  and  the  persistent 
recurrence  of  phenomena  in  definite  rela- 
tions," suggested  to  Sir  Isaac  Newton  the 
presence  and  the  operation  of  a  natural  law, 
a  universal  and  eternal  law  of  the  physical 
world.  He  saw  that  every  particle  of  matter 
is  attracted  by,  or  gravitates  to,  every  other 
particle  of  matter.  He  discovered  the  key- 
stone of  his  "  Principia,"  the  principle  of 
"  Universal  Gravitation."  And  he  an- 
nounced to  the  world  the  law  that  makes 
the  apples  fall.  It  is  the  same  law  in  ac- 
cordance with  which  the  atoms  float  in  the 
sunbeams,  and  the  suns  and  systems  are 
held  in  their  courses  through  infinite  space. 
It  is  the  law  of  gravitation. 

And  in  accordance  with  that  law  of  gravi- 
tation  the   whole   material   universe  is  held 


l6  THE  NORTH   AMERICAN   IDEA 

together,  and  works  together,  part  cooperat- 
ing with  part  and  making  what  the  poets 
called  "  the  music  of  the  spheres"  : 

*'  Forever  singing  as  they  shine 
The  hand  that  made  us  is  divine," 

And  so,  too,  the  window-cleaner  on  the 
sixteenth  story,  because  he  respects  the  law 
of  gravitation,  moves  through  his  perilous 
task  without  damage  to  himself  or  hurt  to 
the  innocent  people  on  the  street  below,  the 
airman  pursues  his  way  12,000  feet  above 
the  street,  and  the  seaman  burrows  in  the 
submarine  far  down  below  the  surface,  each 
confident  and  secure  in  willing  obedience  to 
the  law  of  gravitation. 

Gravitation  is  the  law  of  the  material 
world,  the  inherent  law  of  the  nature  of 
things.  Obedience  to  that  law  means 
strength  and  service  and  peace  for  all  who 
obey.  Transgression  of  that  law  means  dis- 
order, disaster,  defeat.  That  law  is  no  re- 
specter of  persons.  It  is  the  same  for  the 
just  and  for  the  unjust,  for  the  wise  and  for 
the  foolish.     If  any  man  falls  on  that  law  he 


LAW  OF  THE  WORLD'S  GOOD-WILL      1 7 

will  be  broken.  If  that  law  falls  on  any  man 
it  will  grind  him  to  powder.  The  law  of 
gravitation  is  the  eternal  law  of  the  Nature 
of  Things. 

The  Law  of  Human  Society 

There  is  another  law  in  the  universe,  an 
inherent,  essential,  inexorable  law,  as  abso- 
lute and  as  commanding  in  the  social  world 
of  men  as  the  law  of  gravitation  is  in  the 
material  world  of  things.  It  is  the  eternal 
law  of  the  nature  of  men,  the  eternal  social 
law  by  which  human  units,  units  of  indi- 
viduals or  units  of  nations,  are  held  together 
in  human  society,  unit  holding  with  unit, 
part  cooperating  with  part,  the  good  of  each 
making  for  the  welfare  of  all,  and  lawless- 
ness in  any  one  part  anywhere  working  dis- 
aster and  loss  throughout  the  whole  social 
order.  That  infinite  and  immutable  law  of 
the  ordered  life  of  human  society  is  the  law 
of  the  world's  good-will. 

The  law  of  good-will.  It  is  a  law  ;  not 
an  opinion,  which  may  be  right  or  may  be 
wrong ;    not  a   maxim   which   may   be   ob- 


l8     THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  IDEA 

served  or  may  be  neglected.  It  is  the  law 
oi  the  very  nature  of  men  as  surely  and  as 
inescapably  as  gravitation  is  the  law  of  the 
very  nature  of  things.  And  that  law  of 
good-will  was  not  made  by  man,  not  any 
more  than  the  law  of  gravitation  was  made 
by  things. 

Law  is  Law 

In  a  very  real  sense,  in  a  very  deep  and 
profound  sense,  law  never  is  made,  never 
can  be  made.  Law  is.  The  law  that  made 
the  apple  fall  was  not  made,  neither  by  the 
apple,  nor  by  the  tree,  nor  by  the  ground. 
That  law  always  was  law,  always  is  law,  al- 
ways shall  be  law,  always  and  everywhere 
in  all  the  world  of  things  throughout  all  the 
universe  of  matter. 

And  the  law  of  human  society,  the  law  of 
the  world's  good-will,  was  not  made.  It  was 
not  made  by  Kings  in  the  days  of  their  Di- 
vine Right:  not  by  Parliament  in  the  high 
days  of  the  Aristocracy  :  not  by  Congress  in 
the  broad  days  of  the  Democracy :  not  by 
any  Council  of  the  People  in  our  own  free 


LAW  OF  THE  WORLD'S   GOOD-WILL      1 9 

and  easy  days  of  the  Initiative,  the  Referen- 
dum and  the  Recall. 

The  law  of  good-will  always  was  law, 
everywhere  is  law,  and  forever  shall  be  law. 
It  is  law  for  all  men,  savage  and  civilized. 
It  is  law  for  all  angels,  fallen  or  unfallen.  It 
is  imperative  for  all  moral  creatures,  obliga- 
tory and  inflexible,  everywhere  and  forever- 
more,  throughout  all  the  moral  universe. 

Law  is  Not  Broken 

And  the  law  of  good-will  is  inviolable. 
It  cannot  be  broken.  It  never  is  broken, 
not  any  more  than  the  law  of  gravitation  is 
broken.  In  our  loose  and  heedless  way  of 
speaking  we  say  the  man  broke  the  law, 
when  he  ignored  it  or  defied  it,  stepped 
over  the  ledge  of  the  sixteenth  story  window. 
But  it  was  not  the  law  that  was  broken. 
Gravitation  remained  inviolate,  constant,  se- 
rene. It  was  the  man  who  was  broken.  He 
fell  to  the  pavement  below,  a  broken  and 
lifeless  mass. 

So,  too,  when  any  one  of  us  sins  against 
the   law    of    good-will,   against   mercy   and 


^20  THE   NORTH   AMERICAN   IDEA 

righteousness  and  love,  when  we  are  hateful 
in  our  spirit,  or  mean  in  our  motive,  or 
vengeful  in  our  purpose,  when  we  think  the 
worst  thing  and  plan  the  hurtful  thing  and 
speak  the  vindictive  thing,  when  we  cherish 
in  our  hearts  bad- will  against  any  other  hu- 
man being,  we  sin  not  only  against  the  ab- 
stract law  of  the  social  order  without,  but 
against  the  eternal  law  of  our  own  moral  in- 
tegrity, the  inflexible  law  of  our  own  soul's 
happiness  within.  And  if  we  surrender  to 
the  motive  of  bad-will,  if  we  persist  in  its 
way,  something  happens  in  our  own  moral 
nature,  and  happens  at  once.  A  moral  pen- 
alty follows  on  the  heels  of  a  moral  crime ;  a 
penalty  is  demanded  which  must  be  paid  in 
us  and  must  be  paid  in  full.  Hate  does  not 
break  the  law.     It  breaks  the  man. 

The  law  of  good-will  was  the  social  law 
for  the  first  family  of  man,  and  its  first  trans- 
gression brought  its  first  penalty.  When 
Cain  went  up  against  Abel,  and  when  he 
tried  to  justify  himself  with  his  utterly  unso- 
cial challenge,  "Am  I  my  brother's  keeper?" 
he  repudiated  the  eternal  social  obligation, 


LAW   OF  THE   WORLD'S   GOOD-WILL      21 

and  he  sinned  against  the  law  of  good-will 
which  everywhere  and  for  all  races  holds  hu- 
man society  together.  Cain  did  not  break 
the  law.  The  law  broke  Cain,  and  sent  him 
out  broken,  a  fugitive  and  a  vagabond  for- 
ever. 

Ages  before  it  was  written  in  the  Levitical 
code,  "Thou  shalt  love  thy  neighbour  as 
thyself."  That  absolute  command  was  the 
imperative  of  all  human  society  everywhere. 
Sinai  and  its  Ten  Commandments  did  not 
make  that  law  or  make  it  authoritative. 
Sinai  only  gave  emphasis  to  the  law  which 
it  proclaimed,  only  made  it  plain  that  the 
law  of  good-will  is  inherent  in  the  very  na- 
ture of  men,  an  essential  and  a  universal 
element  in  the  life  of  all  the  ordered  human 
society. 

Nor  did  Jesus  make  the  law  of  good-will. 
He  declared  the  second  commandment  of  the 
law  to  be,  "  Thou  shalt  love  thy  neighbour 
as  thyself,"  but  He  recognized  that  command 
as  having  been  law  from  the  beginning.  His 
whole  teaching  and  His  whole  life  were,  not 
to  abolish  that  law,  but  to  fulfill  it.     The  su- 


22  THE  NORTH    AMERICAN   IDEA 

preme  law  of  His  eternal  kingdom  is  the  law 
of  Love.  The  unmistakable  maxim  and 
mark  of  His  world-wide  discipleship  is  "  love 
one  another."  And  Paul  was  at  once  the 
profoundest  student  of  the  teachings  of  Jesus 
and  their  truest  interpreter  when  he  laid 
down  this  axiom  and  announced  this  con- 
sequent command :  "  Love  is  the  fulfilling 
of  the  law  ;  therefore  thou  shaft  love  thine 
enemies." 

Good-  Will  Holds  True 

And  the  eternal  law  of  the  social  good-will 
cannot  be  kept  in  any  other  way  or  by  any 
other  process.  The  moral  universe  is  so 
ordered  that  its  supreme  and  inherent  law 
cannot  be  kept,  and  its  commands  cannot  be 
fulfilled,  except  in  the  true  spirit  of  love  and 
through  the  unselfish  service  love  inspires. 
The  authority  of  that  law  of  good-will  is 
absolute.  It  does  not  depend  on  any  belief, 
or  unbelief  or  disbelief  of  the  individual,  any 
more  than  the  law  of  gravitation  depends  on 
the  scientific  beliefs  or  disbeliefs  of  the  man 
at  the  sixteenth  story  window.     A  man  may 


LAW  OF  THE  WORLD'S   GOOD-WILL      23 

be  a  Christian  or  he  may  be  a  pagan,  but  the 
law  of  good-will  holds  true. 

God  or  no  God  that  law  is  supreme.  Bible 
or  no  Bible,  that  law  is  supreme.  Church  or 
no  Church,  that  law  is  supreme.  And  no 
man  can  keep  the  law  of  good-will  except 
through  the  life  of  love  inspired  by  the  spirit 
of  service. 

And  if  a  man  sins  against  the  law  of 
good-will  his  own  moral  life  is  broken,  just 
as  surely  as  his  body  is  broken  if  he  falls 
from  the  sixteenth  story  window.  If  a  man 
cannot  love,  or  will  not  love,  or  does  not 
love,  he  pays  the  penalty  of  not  loving,  pays 
it  in  the  barrenness  and  the  bankruptcy  of 
his  own  moral  being. 

The  two  alternatives  of  the  moral  universe 
are  fixed,  unchangeable,  immutable.  They 
cannot  be  altered  either  by  men  or  by  God. 
They  inhere  in  the  very  nature  of  all  moral 
beings.  On  the  one  side  is  Love  ;  and  Love 
is  the  fulfilling  of  the  law  of  the  social  order. 
On  the  other  side  is  Hate ;  and  Hate  is  the 
denial  of  the  law  of  the  social  order.  These 
two  are  not  the  same.     Love  and  Hate  do 


24  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  IDEA 

not  move  in  the  same  direction.     Tliey  can- 
not reach  the  same  goal.     One  produces  a 
personal  character  of  good-will,  which  means 
heaven.      The    other    produces  a   personal 
character    of    bad-will,    which    means    hell. 
Law  would  not  be  Law,  and  God  would  not 
be  God,  if  at  any  time,  or  for  any  person,  or 
in  any  world,  a  life  of  service  motived  by 
good-will  led  to  hell,  or  if  a  life  of  selfishness 
motived  by  bad-will  led  to  heaven.     Hell  is 
the  inevitable  moral  consummation  and  the 
eternal   moral   permanence   of   the  spirit  of 
hate  and  the  life  of  selfishness.     Heaven  is 
the  inevitable  moral  consummation  and  the 
eternal  moral  permanence  of  the  spirit  of  love 
and  the  life  of  service.     The  law  of  the  moral 
universe  holds  for  good  or  for  bad.     It  does 
not  circle  or  stop  short.     It  moves  forth  and 
straight  on.     Whatsoever  a  man  soweth  that 
shall  he  also  reap.     It  must  be  so. 

And  because  it  "must"  be  so,  because  of 
that  inexorable  "must"  of  the  moral  uni- 
verse, and  because  the  eternal  moral  law 
said,  and  always  must  say,  "  Thou  shalt 
love,"  the  moral  nature  of  man,  perverted  by 


LAW  OF  THE  WORLD'S   GOOD-WILL      25 

sin  and  destroyed  by  guilt,  found  it  diffi- 
cult, indeed  found  it  impossible,  to  keep  that 
absolute  and  holy  law  of  the  moral  universe. 
The  theologians  may  argue  about  it  as  they 
will,  the  philosophers  may  dispute  as  they 
please,  but  the  fact  remains  that  "  no  mere 
man  since  the  fall  has  been  able  perfectly  to 
keep  the  commandments  of  God  but  doth 
daily  break  them  in  thought,  word  and 
deed."  All  history  proves  that  moral  inabil- 
ity. All  experience  bears  it  witness.  Science 
and  religion  alike  agree  in  the  absolute  im- 
perative of  Jesus  to  Nicodemus :  "  Ye  must 
be  born  again."  In  a  world  like  this  no  man 
can  keep  the  law  of  good-will  unless  and 
until  he  has  been  born  into  the  new  life  of 
love  and  answers  to  the  spirit  of  service. 

Nothing  is  more  impossible  in  all  the 
moral  universe,  with  men  or  with  angels, 
than  for  the  spirit  of  hate  to  practice  the 
ways  of  love,  or  for  the  character  of  selfish- 
ness to  do  the  deeds  of  service,  or  for  the  un- 
righteous life  to  yield  the  fruits  of  holiness. 
It  can't  be  done.  Men  do  not  gather  grapes 
of   thorns.     The  tree  is  known  by  its  fruit 


26     THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  IDEA 

And  that  fruit  is  the  vital  outgrowth  of  the 
life,  not  the  artificial  attachment  of  a  me- 
chanical scheme.  What  the  theologians  call 
"  forensic  righteousness,"  in  itself  is  not 
enough — the  righteousness,  whether  per- 
sonal or  implied,  that  can  stand  the  white 
light  of  a  court  of  law.  There  is  needed  also 
what  the  theologians  call  "  ethical  righteous- 
ness"— the  righteousness  of  practical  life 
which  in  daily  contact  with  every-day  affairs 
meets  and  answers  the  ethical  distinctions  of 
right  and  wrong,  and  complies  with  the 
ethical  obligations  "  you  must  do  the  right" 
and  '*  you  must  not  do  the  wrong." 

The  birth  of  Christ  into  the  life  of  humanity 
— the  incarnation  of  God  in  the  world  of 
men — was  an  absolute  necessity,  if  humanity 
was  to  have  a  new  start.  The  death  of 
Christ,  as  a  sacrifice  in  Love's  infinite  service, 
was  an  absolute  necessity  if  out  of  the  moral 
death  of  human  sin  there  should  arise  a  new 
life  of  love,  working  at  a  regenerated  social 
order,  into  the  new  heaven  and  the  new 
earth,  with  new  impulses,  new  desires,  new 
motives    and    new  ideals.     Paul    is  true  to 


LAW  OF  THE  WORLD'S  GOOD-WILL      27 

science  when  he  declares,  "  If  any  man  is 
in  Christ  he  is  a  new  creation."  And  in  that 
new  creation  for  individuals  in  their  social 
relations,  and  for  nations  in  their  inter- 
national life,  the  law  of  social  good-will  is 
the  law  of  harmonious  and  peaceful  life  for 
the  world.  Browning  is  everlastingly  true  to 
eternal  truth  when  in  "Saul"  he  makes 
David  say  : 

**  I  have  gone  the  whole  round  of  creation  : 
I  saw  as  I  spoke. 
I  spoke  as  I  saw. 
I  report  as  a  man  may  of  God's  work  — 
All's  love,  yet  all's  law." 

And  all  is  law.  The  whole  world  of  things 
and  the  whole  world  of  men  :  "  all's  love,  yet 
all's  law."  The  law  of  gravitation  permeates 
the  measureless  immensity  of  the  material 
universe,  and  holds  the  minutest  atom  in  its 
place.  Ascend  up  into  heaven,  and  that  law 
is  there.  Descend  into  the  grave  and  that 
law  is  there.  Take  the  wings  of  the  morn- 
ing and  dwell  in  the  uttermost  parts  of  the 
sea,  and  there  the  law  of  gravitation  is  the 
sustaining  power  on  every  hand.     The  dark- 


28  THE   NORTH   AMERICAN    IDEA 

ness  and  the  light  are  both  aHke  in  a  universe 
where  all's  law. 

And  "  all's  love."  In  all  parts  of  the  moral 
universe,  and  for  all  beings  that  know  the  dif- 
ference between  right  and  wrong,  and  for  the 
eternal  and  uncreated  God  Himself — "  all's 
love,  yet  all's  law."  The  morning  stars  sang 
together  in  the  perfect  harmonies  of  perfect 
law.  And  all  the  sons  of  God  shouted  for 
joy  in  the  conscious  service  of  perfect  love. 
And  to-day  the  whole  creation  groans  and 
travails  in  pain,  waiting  to  be  delivered  from 
the  bondage  of  lawlessness  and  discord  and 
hate  which  man's  first  disobedience  brought 
into  the  world. 

The  law  of  good-will  cannot  be  sinned 
against  without  its  penalty  being  paid.  Bad- 
will  between  man  and  man,  between  class 
and  class,  between  nation  and  nation — bad- 
will  is  sin  against  the  immutable  law  of  the 
social  order,  and  the  soul  that  sinneth,  the 
class  that  sinneth,  the  nation  that  sinneth,  it 
shall  die. 

The  newsboy  was  right.  "  Things  don't 
fall  up :    they   fall   down."     The  law   holds : 


LAW   OF  THE  WORLD'S   GOOD-WILL      29 

the  wages  of  sin  is  deatli.  And  it  is  law  for 
the  greatest  empires  as  for  the  weakest  in- 
dividuals. The  whole  world  is  at  this  very 
hour  writhing  in  the  tragedies  of  a  world 
war,  because,  on  a  world  scale,  all  nations 
are  involved  in  sin  against  the  eternal  law  of 
the  world's  good-will. 

The  nations  would  not  learn  what  all  their 
experience  tried  to  teach  :  that  the  law  of 
good-will  is  law  for  the  nations  as  it  is  law 
for  individuals  and  for  families  ;  and  that  the 
law  of  good-will  will  not  be  mocked. 

The  law  is  not  mocked.  International 
good-will  is  not  mocked.  International  law 
is  not  mocked.  The  obligations  of  peace  and 
the  ideals  of  service  are  not  mocked.  But 
what  a  mockery  this  world  war  is  of  all  the 
cunning  diplomacies  of  deceit !  What  a  mock- 
ery of  the  arrogant  assurances  of  Brute  Force  1 
What  a  mockery  of  the  selfish  ambitions  of 
despots  and  autocrats  !  What  a  mockery  of 
all  the  mad  pretentions  of  Will  to  Power ! 

Caesar  tried  it  in  Christ's  day,  and  the  em- 
pire of  the  Caesars  was  broken.  Alexander 
tried  it,  and  nothing  remains  but  a  warning. 


30  THE  NORTH   AMERICAN   IDEA 

Napoleon  tried  it,  and  the  France  of  to-day  is 
a  denial,  a  glorious  denial  of  the  despotism 
for  which  Napoleon  stood.  The  Kaiser  of 
Germany  tried  it,  and  General  von  Bernhardi, 
his  war  lord,  made  a  world  tour  of  Egypt  and 
India  and  Japan  and  South  America,  and  in 
191 3  he  secretly  toured  the  United  States  to 
teach  that  "  Law  is  a  makeshift,  that  the  only 
reality  is  Force ;  Law  is  for  weak  men  and 
for  weak  nations,  but  Force  is  for  the  strong, 
and  that  the  State  is  above  morality."  And 
in  1914,  in  defiance  of  Law,  in  defiance 
of  Justice,  in  ruthless  defiance  of  solemn  treaty 
obligations,  the  Kaiser  and  his  war-lords  put 
Bernhardi's  teaching  into  execution,  and  the 
blood  of  defenseless  Belgium,  like  the  blood 
of  the  murdered  Abel  at  history's  early  dawn, 
cried  aloud  and  still  cries  for  the  vengeance 
of  God  on  the  most  colossal  crime  of  Cain. 

God  is  Not  Mocked 

And  once  again  in  the  terrible  realities  of 
these  awful  months  God  is  not  mocked  :  Law 
is  not  mocked  :  the  Galilean  is  not  mocked. 
The  law  of  the  world's  good-will  stands  and 


LAW   OF  THE  WORLD'S   GOOD-WILL      3 1 

forever  will  stand,  majestic  and  inviolate, 
when  the  haughty  hosts  of'the  Prussian  war- 
lords are  put  to  confusion  and  when  their  in- 
famous lawbreaker,  the  disproved  suicide  of 
history,  falls  a  broken  and  helpless  wreck  in 
the  world's  front  street. 

But  the  imperious  law  of  the  world's  good- 
will, whose  transgression  makes  inevitable 
Germany's  undoing,  is  law  for  Britain,  too, 
and  for  France,  and  for  Russia,  and  for  all 
the  allied  warring  nations  of  Europe.  It  is 
law  for  America  also,  law  for  Canada,  scarred 
and  still  bleeding  from  the  awful  woundings 
of  these  years  of  the  world's  war,  and  law  for 
the  United  States,  set  free  at  last  from  all 
moral  hesitations  and  divided  counsels,  and 
standing  up  to  be  counted  in  the  world's 
Armageddon  on  the  side  of  righteousness  and 
freedom  and  truth. 

The  world's  good-will  is  law  for  us  all. 
What  our  nations  sow  our  nations  also  shall 
reap.  And  the  good-will  which  is  the  world's 
stern  law  is  no  soft  and  flabby  temperament 
that  shuts  its  eyes  to  all  moral  distinctions 
and  refuses   all   moral   obligations.     In  the 


32     THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  IDEA 

world's  good-will  "  All's  love,"  but  justly,  un- 
flinchingly, eternally,  "all's  law."  There  is 
no  good-will  anywhere,  and  there  can  be  none, 
unless  at  the  heart  of  it  burns  the  white  fire  of  a 
holy  love,  and  glows  the  white  light  of  a  right- 
eous life.  Righteousness  is  of  the  very  essence 
of  good-will.  Righteousness  is  the  twin  sister 
of  peace.  There  can  be  no  good-will  for  indi- 
viduals or  for  nations  unless  and  until  "  right- 
eousness and  peace  have  kissed  each  other." 

And  in  a  moral  world,  a  world  under  the 
regnancy  of  moral  law,  there  is  no  neutrality. 
There  can  be  no  neutrality  in  a  world  whose 
governing  law  is  social  good-will.  Never 
again,  so  long  as  the  history  of  the  past  three 
years  stands,  will  any  wise  statesman  in  any 
great  country  even  pretend  that  his  nation  is 
neutral,  if  anywhere  in  all  this  world  despot- 
ism is  given  a  free  hand,  if  international  trea- 
ties are  mocked  at  as  scraps  of  paper,  and  if 
the  law  of  the  world's  good-will  is  scorned  as 
a  makeshift  for  weak  nations. 

International  good-will  is  the  fulfilling  of 
the  supreme  law  of  all  nations.  The  nations, 
our  nations,   all   the  nations  of  the  world,  in 


LAW  OF  THE  WORLD'S  GOOD-WILL     33 

all  their  Parliaments,  in  all  the  secret  places 
of  their  Chancelleries,  throughout  all  their 
Armies  and  all  their  Navies — we  all  must 
learn  what  that  supreme  law  of  the  world- 
neighbourhood  means,  what  it  requires  and 
what  it  forbids  :  "  Thou  shalt  love  thy  neigh- 
bour as  thyself."  For  every  nation  the  "  Thou 
shalt "  of  that  law  is  the  categorical  impera- 
tive that  admits  of  neither  condition  nor  al- 
ternative. The  law  of  the  world's  good-will 
is  the  first  law  of  every  nation. 

The  Organic  Life  of  Society 

And  for  all  nations  on  all  the  continents 
the  organic  law  of  the  world's  social  order 
governs,  without  alternative,  and  without  ex- 
ception. No  nation  sins  alone  or  suffers 
alone.  It  is  with  the  nation  as  it  is  with 
the  window  cleaner.  If  the  man  on  the  ledge 
of  the  sixteenth  story  transgresses  the  law 
of  gravitation  he  pays  the  penalty,  and  not 
in  himself  alone  and  in  his  own  broken  and 
lifeless  body  on  the  pavement  below :  but 
the  innocent  passer-by  on  the  street,  smitten 
unawares  or  unprepared,  he,  too,  must  pay 


34  THE   NORTH   AMERICAN   IDEA 

the  penalty  of  his  unknown  neighbour's  trans- 
gression. No  man  liveth  to  himself.  No  man 
dieth  to  himself.  The  organic  law  of  the 
social  neighbourhood  holds.  The  window 
cleaner  falls  to  his  own  death,  but  in  his  fall 
death  comes  to  his  unsuspecting  neighbour 
in  the  street,  and  sorrow  worse  than  death 
comes  to  innocent  wife  and  helpless  children 
who  are  bound  up  with  him  in  the  organic 
life  of  family  and  friends. 

So  is  it  with  the  nations  in  their  organic 
life  in  the  international  neighbourhood.  The 
nation  that  sins  against  international  good- 
will sins  also  against  its  own  soul.  Slowly 
but  very  surely,  and  sometimes  painfully  and 
at  great  cost,  are  the  nations  learning  that 
the  country  that  frames  a  tariff  of  spite  so 
as  to  damage  the  industry  or  the  trade  of  a 
neighbour-people  is  whetting  a  two-edged 
sword  that  cuts  both  ways  and  wounds  the 
smiter  as  well  as  the  smitten. 

And  so  too  in  the  fearful  smiting  of  inter- 
national war.  No  nation  can  break  through 
the  restraints  and  restrictions  of  international 
good-will    except    it   grasps   the   two-edged 


LAW  OF  THE  WORLD'S   GOOD-WILL      35 

sword,  and  stains  with  its  own  life-blood  the 
weapon  it  forges  against  its  neighbour. 

With  the  confidence  of  the  strong  and  with 
the  arrogance  of  the  selfish,  Germany  mocked 
at  the  guaranteed  neutrality  of  Belgium,  and 
sinned  against  the  eternal  law  of  the  world's 
peace.  The  guarantees  of  the  nations  were 
shattered  into  fragments,  but  the  penalties 
of  the  law  had  to  be  paid  and  they  are  being 
paid  in  full,  in  the  best  blood  of  Germany's 
slaughtered  millions  on  the  pitiless  pave- 
ments of  the  west  front  and  of  the  east  front. 
The  law  stands  inviolate. 

"  Not  Ccesar  But  Christ  !  " 

But  not  the  sinning  nation  alone  suffers. 
Every  nation,  on  every  continent,  and  under 
every  flag,  sooner  or  later,  is  caught  in  the 
dread  catastrophe.  Belgium  was  smitten,  as 
by  a  great  stone  hurtled  from  some  hand  of 
hate  from  some  dizzy  height.  France  was 
smitten  as  by  a  footpad's  shot  from  behind  a 
broken  wall.  And  presently  Europe's  front 
street  was  crowded  by  mobs  of  combatants, 
every  man  with  a  drawn  sword  and  a  loaded 


36  THE  NORTH   AMERICAN   IDEA 

gun.  And  now,  not  all  the  blood  of  the  un- 
counted millions  lined  up  in  all  these  mur- 
derous years  of  war  will  make  atonement  for 
Germany's  sin  against  the  world's  good- will : 
nor  will  all  the  snow  in  the  pure  heavens  of 
all  the  world  for  a  hundred  years  wash  white 
and  clean  the  war-lord's  guilty  hands. 

But  through  it  all  the  law  abides,  the  im- 
mutable law  of  justice  and  service  and  love. 
In  their  ignorance  and  shallowness  and  idle 
clamour  men  wept,  or  moaned  or  shouted 
aloud,  when  this  world-war  first  began,  that 
"  Christianity  has  broken  down."  Half  in 
wonder  and  half  in  regret  they  sighed : 
"  The  Gospel  of  Love  is  disproved."  With 
the  Pagan  finality  that  brooks  no  doubt  and 
no  dispute,  they  pronounced  what  they 
thought  was  history's  last  word :  "  Corsica 
has  conquered  Galilee :  Caesar  has  tri- 
umphed over  Christ." 

That  was  in  the  first  war  tragedies  of  1914. 
The  war  is  fiercer  now,  more  furious,  more 
frightfully  desolating.  But  the  cry  of  the 
world's  great  heart  is  dilTerent.  The  sol- 
emnized note  of  the  world's  strong  voice  is 


LAW  OF  THE  WORLD'S  GOOD-WILL     37 

changed.  Corsica  is  not  heard  of  any  more. 
In  every  language  men  say,  "  It  is  Galilee  or 
it  is  Hell."  From  the  trenches  and  dugouts 
of  the  battle-fields  and  from  the  battalions 
who  have  faced  war's  stern  realities,  men 
send  back  one  strong  resonant,  unfaltering 
testimony  :  •*  Not  Caesar  but  Christ." 

And  high  over  the  hellish  shrieking  of 
war's  artillery,  the  deathless  hope  of  the 
world's  peace  persists.  More  penetrating 
than  the  disproved  and  discordant  Hymn  of 
Hate  is  the  recurrent  anthem  sung  by  the 
wise  and  the  good  and  the  glorified  of  all 
the  generations  of  men.  It  is  a  hymn  of 
faith  and  hope  and  love. 

Life  can  sing  no  Hymn  of  Hate.  Hate  is 
a  discord  and  a  jarring.  Its  key-note  can 
find  no  common  chord.  All  the  great  phi- 
losophers and  all  the  immortal  poets  of  the 
race  agree  in  this,  that  only  love  endures, 
only  peace  survives,  only  truth  stands  fast. 

The  Voice  of  Tennyson 

Tennyson  struck  the  world's  key-note  more 
than   seventy-five   years   ago ;    and   to-day, 


102473 


38  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN   IDEA 

over  all  the  bitterness  and  strife  of  a  world  at 
war,  the  anthem  gathers  volume  and  from 
every  continent  it  makes  a  chorus  of  the 
voices  of  the  free. 

Here  in  the  warm  Southland  my  mind 
goes  away  to  the  far  North  and  to  the  year 
before  the  war.  There  in  the  gray  fogs  of 
the  north  Atlantic,  where  the  Union  Jack 
keeps  watch  and  ward  over  the  island  colony 
of  Newfoundland,  I  spent  glorious  days  and 
unforgetable  nights  on  a  salmon  fishing  trip 
with  Dr.  Henry  van  Dyke,  before  he  went  to 
The  Hague  as  ambassador  from  the  United 
States  to  the  Netherlands. 

All  day  long,  below  Big  Falls,  on  the 
Humber  River,  we  cast  and  drew  and  cast 
and  drew,  as  the  salmon  by  the  hundreds, 
five-pounders,  ten-pounders,  twenty-pound- 
ers, forty-pounders,  heading  upward  from 
the  sea,  made  their  matchless  leap  up  the 
Falls,  twelve  or  fourteen  feet  high,  and  then 
pushed  on,  impelled  by  the  unerring  law  of 
instinct,  to  their  original  spawning  ground, 
seventy-five  miles  farther  up-stream. 

The    day    was   glorious.     But,    when   the 


LAW   OF  THE  WORLD'S   GOOD-WILL      39 

Stars  came  out  far  over  the  summer  sky,  and 
when  the  long,  lonesome  call  of  the  bull 
moose  died  away  in  the  rhythmic  music  of 
Big  Falls  and  of  the  dark  rock-bound  river, 
the  night  was  memorable  beyond  compare. 
There  under  the  quiet  of  the  starry  sky, 
around  the  camp-fire  on  the  rock-summit,  we 
sang  our  evening  hymn.  It  was  one  of  the 
metrical  Psalms  of  David,  the  undying 
Psalm  of  Refuge  and  of  Strength,  sung  by 
the  Scottish  Covenanters,  in  the  black  old 
days  of  bloody  Claverhouse,  and  sung  during 
the  past  year  by  their  descendants  in  those 
lurid,  bloodier  nights  at  Ypres,  the  Somme 
and  Vimy  Ridge. 

And  there  in  the  shining  silence  of  that 
holy  hour,  Dr.  van  Dyke,  Tennyson's  choic- 
est exponent  in  America,  told  the  wondrous 
story,  untold  before,  of  his  vi§it  to  the  im- 
mortal Poet  Laureate  in  his  country  home 
in  rural  England,  not  many  days  before  he 
died. 

On  Monday  morning,  as  he  was  leaving, 
Tennyson  presented  him  with  a  copy  of  his 
photograph.     And  van  Dyke,  with  the  im- 


40  THE  NORTH   AMERICAN   IDEA 

pulse  of  inspiration,  returned  the  photograph 
with  the  request  that  the  poet  write  on  the 
back  of  it  his  autograph,  and  also  the  lines 
from  his  own  life-poetry  he  would  desire 
should  live  if  all  the  rest  he  ever  wrote 
should  die. 

You  students  of  English  literature,  you 
lovers  of  Tennyson,  had  yours  been  all  the 
wonder  and  wealth  that  Tennyson  left  as  a 
legacy  to  the  world,  had  yours  been  "  In 
Memoriam,"  and  "  Locksley  Hall,"  and 
"  Ulysses,"  and  "  The  Two  Voices,"  and  all 
the  idylls,  and  all  the  lyrics,  and  all  the  odes, 
and  all  the  songs,  with  which  Tennyson  en- 
riched nineteenth  century  literature,  and  had 
you  been  asked,  at  the  hour  of  your  "  twi- 
light and  evening  bell,"  to  write  in  a  hne  or 
two  your  life's  message,  your  last  word  to  a 
world  that  loved  you,  what  of  all  those  four- 
score years  of  Tennyson's  experience  and 
brooding,  and  insight  into  life's  secret  mean- 
ings and  highest  uses,  would  you  have  writ- 
ten as  your  farewell  words  ? 

This  is  what  Tennyson  wrote  as  his  very 
last  message  to  the  world,  perhaps  the  last 


LAW  OF  THE  WORLD'S  GOOD-WILL     4I 

words  he  ever  framed — "  and  after  that  the 
dark  " — these  two  Hnes  from  "  Locksley  Hall," 
first  published  before  the  middle  of  last 
century  : 

"  Love  took  up  the  harp  of  life,  and  smote  on  all 
the  chords  with  might ; 
Smote  the  chord  of  Self,  that,  trembling,  passed 
in  music  out  of  sight." 

Love  alone  can  do  it.  Love  alone  has  the 
secret  or  the  power  or  the  touch  that  can  so 
smite  the  harp  of  life,  smite  it  so  truly,  smite 
it  so  ringingly,  that  the  chord  of  self,  the 
chord  that  spoils  all  the  harmonies  of  life,  in 
the  family  circle,  in  the  social  sphere,  in  the 
national  life,  in  the  world  of  all  the  nations — 
Love  alone  can  so  touch  the  harp  of  life  that 
the  chord  of  Self  not  only  passes  out  of 
sight,  but  passes  in  music,  in  the  unbroken 
harmonies  of  perfect  trust  and  good-will  and 
peace. 

And  the  promised  day  of  the  world's  peace 
is  coming.  The  law  of  the  world's  good- 
will will  yet  be  the  rule  of  international  life. 
It  is  brought  nearer  by  every  kept  treaty  of 
the  nations  ;  nearer  by  every  alliance  of  the 


42     THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  IDEA 

free  peoples  in  defense  of  the  rights  of 
freedom  for  the  world.  The  law  of  the 
world's  good-will  shall  be  asserted  yet  more 
and  more,  and  when  this  world  war  is  over, 
all  the  democracies  of  the  world  shall  stand 
together  as  the  United  States  and  Canada 
stand  to-day,  and  shall  stand  for  a  just,  a 
free,  and  an  enduring  peace : 

"  Till  the  war-drum  throbs  no  longer,  and  the 
battle- flags  are  furled 
In  the  Parliament  of  man,  the  Federation  of 
the  world." 


LECTURE  II 

IN     THE     WORLD 
CONFLICT  OF  IDEAS 


LECTURE  II 

IN  THE  WORLD  CONFLICT 
OF  IDEAS 

IDEAS,  not  things,  are  the  supreme  re- 
alities. Things,  mere  things,  mindless, 
conscienceless,  passionless  things,  meas- 
uring so  far,  weighing  so  much,  bought  and 
sold  for  such  a  price — mere  things  have  no 
real  significance  apart  from  the  mind  that 
perceives  them  and  the  ideas  that  give  them 
worth.  Mere  things  would  not  count  in  the 
infinite  scheme  were  there  no  idea  charging 
them  with  dynamic  and  giving  them  direc- 
tion, and  no  heart  of  Love  or  of  Hate  to  sup- 
ply their  meaning  and  their  motive  powen 

The  Supre7nacy  of  Ideas 

It  is  this  absolute  supremacy  of  the  things 
of  the  mind  over  the  things  of  the  flesh,  of 
the  spiritual  over  the  carnal,  of  eternal 
Thought  over  evanescent  phenomena — it  is 
this  primacy  of  ideas  that  in  all  stages  of 
civilization,  and  never  more  than  now,  gives 

45 


46  THE  NORTH   AMERICAN   IDEA 

the  great  places  of  opportunity  and  of 
responsibility  to  those  who  awaken  and 
stimulate  and  organize  the  thinking  of  the 
people,  and  especially  the  thinking  of  the 
people  of  a  democracy.  The  teacher's  desk, 
the  preacher's  pulpit,  the  orator's  platform, 
the  writer's  sanctum — these  are  the  places  of 
true  leadership,  the  thrones  of  real  power. 

And  so  it  comes  that  the  great  conflicts  in 
the  world's  history,  the  only  real  conflicts, 
are  the  conflicts,  not  of  brute  forces,  but  of 
world  ideas.  For  well-nigh  three  terrible 
years  the  world  war  in  Europe  has  gone  on, 
armies  against  armies,  navies  against  navies, 
submarines  burrowing  underseas,  aeroplanes 
swooping  overhead,  mechanism  and  physical 
force  pretending  to  the  mastership  every- 
where. It  is  all  very  terrible,  very  horrible, 
very  ghastly  :  but  were  that  all — that  crash 
of  armed  forces  along  the  wide  miles  of 
battle  fronts,  that  ceaseless  bursting  of  shells 
from  long-range  guns,  that  welter  of  the  day 
and  that  weirdness  of  the  night — were  that 
all,  then  indeed  were  this  war  only  a  hideous 
crime  on  both  sides,  brutal,  vulgar,  unheroic, 


IN   THE  WORLD   CONFLICT   OF   IDEAS     47 

a    gigantic   dog-fight   in   the   world's   front 
street. 

What  saves  this  world  war  from  being,  in 
the  eyes  alike  of  a  Canadian  and  of  an 
American,  an  unredeemed  and  undisguised 
brutality  is  that,  more  than  any  of  the  great 
wars  of  history,  it  is  a  struggle  not  for  terri- 
tory but  for  freedom,  for  the  freedom  of  the 
soul,  for  the  ideals  of  liberty :  a  struggle  for 
the  right  of  a  free  people  to  govern  them- 
selves, and  for  equality  of  opportunity  for  the 
little  kingdoms  and  the  small  nationalities : 
a  struggle  for  the  right  to  a  place  in  the  sun, 
not  for  the  Great  Powers  alone,  Britain  and 
France  and  Germany  and  Russia,  but  for 
Belgium  and  for  Denmark  and  Holland  and 
the  Scandinavian  countries  and  also  Greece 
and  the  Balkan  States,  that  they,  too,  as 
freely  and  securely  as  their  larger  neigh- 
bours, may  each  be  free  to  live  their  own 
life,  to  cherish  their  own  ideals,  and  to  make 
their  distinctive  contribution  to  the  civiliza- 
tion and  freedom  of  the  world.  For  any- 
thing less  noble  the  free  peoples  of  North 
America  ought  to  be  too  proud  to  fight.    But 


48  THE   NORTH   AMERICAN   IDEA 

for  anything  more  worthy  none  of  the  heroes 
and  patriots  of  old  ever  had  a  chance  to  go 
out  to  die. 

Ideas  in  Conflict 

The  ideas  in  conflict  at  the  battle  fronts  of 
Europe  these  many  months  are  not  merely 
the  selfish  ambitions  of  arrogant  dynasties 
each  eager  for  domination  over  the  others. 
If  Britain  were  fighting  only  for  the  over- 
throw of  Germany  and  the  German  race,  so 
that  British  autocrats  might  rule  the  German 
people  as  German  autocrats  have  ruled  in 
Alsace  and  Schleswig,  the  conflict  would  be 
one  in  which  Canadians  could  have  no 
honourable  part.  What  makes  even  the 
thought  of  the  conflict  tolerable  is  the  con- 
ception of  its  real  meaning,  of  the  supreme 
human  interests  at  stake,  and  of  the  world 
ideas  involved  in  the  issue. 

The  world  of  1914  had  begun  to  be  a  so- 
ciety of  nations.  Great  ideas,  through  the 
centuries,  had  been  at  work  in  life  and  in 
history.  Those  ideas  were  slowly  express- 
ing themselves  in  the  institutions  of  law  and 


IN   THE  WORLD   CONFLICT   OF   IDEAS     49 

of  justice  and  of  free  government.  Wherever 
civilization  had  prevailed  over  barbarism,  in- 
dividuals were  being  organized  into  a  com- 
munity, communities  into  a  nation,  and  in 
turn  the  nations  were  beginning  to  feel  out 
into  international  relations.  The  old  barba- 
rism of  the  international  jungle  began  to 
change  into  the  civilized  neighbourhood  of 
interdependent  nations.  Law,  justice,  free- 
dom— those  world  ideas  had  found  place  and 
had  come  to  expression  in  the  thought  and 
speech  of  all  world  nations  before  1914. 

Law,  justice,  freedom !  Those  ideas  are 
the  products  of  no  one  race,  the  peculiar 
possession  of  no  one  nation.  They  are  the 
sparks  that  disturb  the  clod  in  all  life  and 
through  all  history  whenever  man  rises  to 
a  consciousness  above  the  brute  creation. 
Each  separate  people  has  its  contribution  to 
make,  its  ideal  to  achieve.  Not  Israel  alone, 
not  Greece  alone,  not  Rome  alone  ;  we  and 
all  the  nations  of  to-day  are  the  heirs  of  their 
great  yesterdays.  But  the  nations  of  to-day 
also :  each  has  its  part  to  play,  its  life  to  live, 
its  place  in  the  general  plan,  and  its  distinc- 


50  THE   NORTH   AMERICAN   IDEA 

tion  of  service  to  all  the  world,  for  the  en- 
richment and  the  ennoblement  of  the  civiliza- 
tion of  to-morrow. 

Each  nation  lives  by  the  idea  it  embodies. 
If  one  nation  suffers  or  is  spoiled  of  its  idea, 
or  is  robbed  of  its  place  in  the  sun,  all  the 
world  of  nations  suffers  with  it,  suffers  a  loss 
that  has  no  gain  to  match.  Belgium  had  its 
idea,  and  Holland,  and  Denmark,  and 
Sweden,  and  Norway,  and  Italy,  and  Greece, 
and  Serbia,  as  truly  as  Britain,  and  United 
States,  and  France,  and  Germany  and  Rus- 
sia :  each  had  its  idea  to  contribute  to  the 
sum  total  of  the  world's  ideas  of  freedom  and 
justice  and  government. 

That  distinctive  idea  is  the  soul  of  the  na- 
tion. To  cherish  that  idea,  to  guard  that 
depositum  of  eternal  truth,  and  to  release  it 
in  the  thought  and  life  of  the  world — that  for 
the  nation  is  to  save  its  soul.  But  to  betray 
that  idea,  to  allow  it  to  wither,  or  to  barter 
that  idea  for  any  of  the  things  of  the  flesh,  is 
the  nation's  suicide.  For  that  idea  to  be 
crushed  out  in  order  that  some  stronger  na- 
tion's designs  may  be  gratified — that  is  in- 


IN  THE  WORLD   CONFLICT  OF   IDEAS     51 

ternational  murder.  To  make  international 
murder  a  crime,  and  a  crime  not  alone 
against  its  helpless  victim,  but  a  crime 
against  the  whole  society  of  civilized  nations 
— that  is  the  function  and  purpose  of  inter- 
national law.  And  to  put  behind  interna- 
tional law,  behind  its  declarations  and  re- 
quirements and  sanctions,  the  organized 
opinion  and  the  organized  judgment  and  the 
organized  power  of  all  law-abiding  nations — 
that  is  the  next  necessary  step  towards  true  in- 
ternationalism ;  and  not  until  that  is  done  will 
the  foundations  be  laid  or  the  fabric  erected, 
strong  and  enduring  for  the  world's  peace. 

Great  ideas  are  astir  everywhere  in  the 
world  to-day.  Every  continent  is  disturbed. 
Every  nation  is  unsettled.  The  established 
order  of  things  is  upset.  America  as  well  as 
Europe  is  in  commotion.  Something  hap- 
pened that  made  a  world  upheaval  inevitable. 
One  vital  idea  let  loose  would  do  it.  An  idea 
set  free  always  starts  a  revolution  in  the 
minds  of  men.  Nothing  in  all  the  world  is 
so  revolutionary  as  a  great  idea  incarnated 
in  a  living  personality. 


52  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN   IDEA 

When  Jesus  Christ  said  to  a  little  group  of 
Galileans  that  He  came  not  to  send  peace  on 
the  earth  but  a  sword,  He  had  in  mind 
nothing  so  clumsy  or  so  impotent  as  a 
deadly  weapon  drawn  from  Caesar's  armoury. 
Goliath's  heavy  sword  was  good  enough  to 
cut  off  Goliath's  stupid  head  :  a  centurion's 
sword  was  equal  to  the  task  of  cutting  off  a 
servant's  ear  ;  but  facing  the  world  in  the 
ceaseless  conflict  of  ideas,  the  weapons  of  the 
military  autocrats  were  of  no  avail  for  the 
Prophet  from  Galilee.  When  He  set  out  to 
conquer  the  world,  He  drew  a  feathered 
arrow  from  the  quiver  of  the  mind  and  He 
flashed  a  two-edged  sword  from  the  scab- 
bard of  truth.  He  challenged  Caesar's  in- 
vincible legions  with  nothing  but  an  idea  ; 
and  the  revolution  He  started  twenty  cen- 
turies ago  turned  the  world  upside  down. 
That  idea  released  is  still  the  power  that 
makes  thrones  totter  and  sets  nations  free. 
A  whole  handful  of  His  ideas  were  flung  out 
from  the  hilltop  in  Galilee  when  He  said, 
"  Go  ye  into  all  the  world  and  preach  the 
Gospel  to  every  creature." 


IN  THE  WORLD  CONFLICT  OF  IDEAS  53 

Those  ideas  are  awork  in  the  seething 
mind  of  the  world  to-day.  They  start  a 
divine  discontent  everywhere.  In  world 
politics  three  great  words,  expressing  three 
world  ideas,  are  already  beginning  to  be  the 
batde-cry  of  the  world's  new  freedom.  Those 
words  are :  Liberty,  Democracy,  Internation- 
alism. 

Liberty !  Somewhere  underneath  all  the 
slaveries  and  despotisms  and  blind  degrada- 
tions of  humanity  there  is  still  left  in  the 
least  and  in  the  worst  a  fragment  of  soul 
that  makes  response  when  the  voice  of  free- 
dom calls.  Liberty  to  think  one's  own 
thoughts,  to  choose  one's  own  ideals,  to  live 
one's  own  life  free  from  the  dictation  and 
driving  of  any  taskmaster — that  passion  for 
liberty,  incurable  and  undying  in  the  human 
soul,  is  the  divine  impulse  that  marks  even 
the  backward  races  and  the  submerged 
classes  as  only  a  litde  lower  than  the  angels. 
So  long  as  that  spark  holds  on  to  burn  there 
is  nothing  impossible  in  the  elevation  of  any 
individual  or  in  the  enfranchisement  of  any 
people.    Liberty  strikes  the  key-note  through 


54     THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  IDEA 

the   discord   of   world   ideas   in    Europe  to- 
day. 

Democracy  I  The  word  goes  back  through 
the  centuries.  It  bears  the  flavour  of  ancient 
Greece.  There  is  the  tang  of  Plato  about  it. 
But  the  idea  of  democracy  came  to  its  own 
and  justified  itself  only  in  the  modern  world. 
America,  with  its  United  States  and  its 
Canada,  prides  itself  over  against  Europe, 
as  embodying  the  world's  idea  of  democracy. 
Here  on  this  continent  has  been  asserted  and 
made  good  the  right  of  a  free  people  to 
govern  themselves.  But  America  is  only 
the  heir  of  Europe's  age-long  struggle  up 
from  servitude  to  self-government. 

So7irces  of  America!  s  Ideas 

Go  back  to  the  countries  from  which  North 
America  drew  its  inspirations  and  its  ideals. 
Go  back  to  France.  Read  again  that  mar- 
vellous history  up  from  Caesar's  absolutism, 
through  Bourbon  tyrannies,  and  over  the 
mad  Napoleon  dreams  of  world  empire. 
The  trail  is  often  soaked  with  the  blood  of 
patriots,  and  piled   high  with  the  corpses  of 


IN  THE  WORLD  CONFLICT  OF  IDEAS     55 

those  who  would  be  free.  But  that  trail, 
throbbing  with  the  ideas  of  freedom  and  de- 
mocracy, led  up  through  the  centuries  of 
blood  and  sacrifice  to  this  day,  this  match- 
less, glorious  day  of  France's  renaissance, 
this  day  of  tragedy  and  terror  when  France 
is  born  again,  born  out  of  her  old  frivolities 
and  her  old  infidelities  into  new  life,  into  a 
new  faith,  into  a  new  freedom  of  the  spirit 
and  a  new  obedience  to  the  Christ.  Amer- 
ica, sated  in  the  materialism  of  peace,  and 
self-satisfied  in  the  impossible  neutrality  of 
humanity's  conflict,  is  now  beginning  to  learn 
from  blood-baptized  France  the  new  sanctities 
of  life  and  the  new  sacredness  of  service. 

And  back  to  Britain !  For  fifteen  hundred 
years  all  Britain  has  been  the  battle-ground 
of  the  fight  for  liberty  and  of  the  idea  of 
democracy.  From  the  days  of  the  Romans, 
through  the  despotism  of  the  Tudors,  the 
autocracy  of  the  Stuarts  and  the  dull  re- 
action of  the  early  Hanoverians,  on  to  our 
own  eventful  days,  the  world  conflict  of  ideas 
raged  blood-red  in  the  Parliament  and  Press 
of  Britain.     On  those  battle  fronts  of  high 


56  THE   NORTH   AMERICAN   IDEA 

debate  were  won  the  victories  which  made 
possible  the  coming  Democracy  of  all  the 
English-speaking  world. 

And  not  in  high  debate  alone  :  in  England 
through  the  Commonwealth,  and  in  Scotland 
under  the  Covenanters,  men  sealed  their  al- 
legiance to  political  and  religious  democracy 
in  their  blood.  The  British  peoples,  among 
themselves  and  against  the  despotism  now 
of  their  King,  now  of  their  Aristocracy,  and 
now  of  their  Crowd,  have  fought  for  the  free- 
dom of  ideas,  for  the  rights  of  the  common 
people,  and  for  equal  justice  for  all  classes 
before  the  law. 

That  idea,  that  dual  world  idea  of  liberty 
and  democracy,  is  the  key  to  British  history. 
Without  its  lead  British  history  is  a  mean- 
ingless muddle,  void  alike  of  sequence  and  of 
purpose.  But  the  ideas  of  freedom  and  self- 
government  produced  the  temper  of  mind  and 
prepared  for  the  union  of  races  and  nation- 
alities at  home,  and  gave  birth  through  the 
century  of  conflict  to  the  free,  self-governing 
Dominions  overseas.  And  because  the  war 
in  Europe  is  a  conflict  of  world  ideas,  a  life- 


IN   THE  WORLD   CONFLICT   OF   IDEAS     57 

and-death  conflict  between  world  Despotism 
and  world  Democracy,  it  was  inevitable  that 
the  British  Lion  and  all  the  Lions*  whelps 
from  the  ends  of  the  earth  should  line  up, 
where  Democracy  makes  its  last  decisive  and 
triumphant  stand,  in  defense  of  the  right  of 
every  free  people  to  govern  themselves. 

The  Coming  of  Russia 

And  Russia  too  I  Not  even  yet  has  the 
outside  world  recovered  from  the  surprise, 
and  caught  its  breath,  because  of  the  seem- 
ing suddenness  with  which  the  old  order  of 
despotism  changed  in  Russia  and  gave  place 
to  the  new  order  of  democracy. 

But  the  change  was  not  sudden.  Far 
back  in  the  generations  of  Russian  pain  and 
passion  the  ideas  of  liberty  began  to  be  set 
free,  here  and  there,  in  the  Russian  heart. 
How  hopeless  the  cause  of  democracy 
seemed.  How  dull  and  servile  the  peasant 
mind.  How  despotic  and  all-powerful  the 
Prussianized  autocrats  in  St.  Petersburg. 
How  far-off  and  farther-going  the  day  of 
Russia's   enfranchisement.     When  lo,  as  in 


58     THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  IDEA 

the  twinkling  of  an  eye,  the  unthinkable  thing 
is  done.  The  two  greatest  commonwealths 
of  Europe,  the  Republic  of  France  and  the 
Kingdom  of  Britain,  battling  together  against 
Teutonism  for  the  future  of  the  world's  de- 
mocracy, on  the  bending  line  of  the  west 
front,  all  of  a  sudden  they  steady  their  step 
and  hearten  their  chorus,  for,  yonder  in  the 
measureless  north  and  east,  almost  unawares, 
the  mightiest  Imperium  in  all  the  world 
tosses  its  cap  high  in  air,  and  shouts  the 
slogan  of  the  free.  The  idea  of  freedom  has 
broken  the  shackles  of  Russian  bondage  and 
tyranny,  and,  please  God,  broken  them  for- 
ever. 

Once  more  a  world  idea  set  free  has 
started  a  revolution  that  will  change  the 
history  of  mankind.  Like  the  Hebrew  exiles 
in  Egypt  when  Joseph  came  to  the  chancel- 
lery, the  haggard  Russian  exiles  could  not 
believe  their  ears  a  month  ago,  when  De- 
mocracy came  to  the  throne  of  the  Roma- 
noffs, and  the  whisper  swept  over  the  snows 
of  Siberia  that  the  days  of  their  mourning 
were    ended.     Already    the    desert    rejoices 


IN   THE  WORLD   CONFLICT  OF   IDEAS     59 

and  blossoms  as  the  rose.  Russia  set  free 
from  herself,  her  own  chains  broken,  the  in- 
triguing Teuton  spies  cast  out,  and  Prussia's 
brutal  idea  repudiated,  the  great  Slav  power 
of  the  world  will  yet  take  its  place  by  the 
side  of  all  the  democracies  of  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  and  the  Celt,  for  the  civil  and  relig- 
ious freedom  of  Europe  and  of  the  world. 

America  Follows  the  Gleam 

In  the  world  conflict  of  ideas,  with  the 
deathless  ideas  of  liberty  and  democracy 
contending  for  their  freedom  in  the  fierce 
struggle  now  waging  in  Europe,  it  was  in- 
evitable that  America,  too,  should  be  in- 
volved and  should  follow  the  gleam.  And 
when  the  conflict  of  ideas  could  find  no  issue 
except  through  the  world's  bloody  conflict 
of  brute  forces,  it  was  inevitable  that  in  the 
end  the  United  States  should  find  its  place, 
its  only  true  and  worthy  place,  lined  up  with 
Canada  and  with  the  Canadian  armies,  in 
resolute  and  unfaltering  defense  of  North 
America's  democracy  in  the  blood-drenched 
No-Man's  Land  of  war-stricken  Europe. 


6o     THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  IDEA 

No  matter  what  George  Washington  said 
or  thought  a  century  and  a  half  ago,  the 
Americans  of  to-day,  if  they  would  be  true  to 
the  spirit  and  the  ideal  of  the  Father  of  their 
country,  had  no  choice  left  in  April,  191 7. 
The  old  cry  of  entangling  alliances  had  no 
meaning  and  no  power,  as  a  reason  for  neu- 
trality or  as  an  excuse  for  keeping  out  of 
war,  when  the  liberties  of  the  world  were  in 
peril  and  when  democracy  in  Europe  was 
bleeding  at  every  pore.  It  may  be  that  to 
have  declared  war  against  Germany  in  19 14 
would  have  been  treason  to  the  old-time 
policy  of  Washington,  but  still  to  have  held 
in  friendly  grasp  the  hand  of  Prussian  au- 
tocracy through  191 7  would  have  been,  for 
the  heirs  of  Washington,  treason  against  hu- 
manity. In  Canada's  name,  I  thank  God 
to-day  for  the  world-enfranchisement  of  the 
United  States. 

Aji  Internationalised  World 

Liberty  1  Democracy  1  Internationalism  ! 
Alread}'  while  the  conflict  is  still  on,  and  out 
of  the  wild  and  deafening  clangour  of  war,  a 


IN   THE  WORLD   CONFLICT   OF   IDEAS     6 1 

great  new  idea  is  emerging  in  the  world's 
mind  and  finding  voice  among  the  nations. 
It  is  the  pregnant  idea  of  an  internationalized 
world. 

In  the  world  of  Yesterday  the  great  word, 
often  spoken  in  the  hard  tone  of  defiance, 
was  "  Nationalism."  The  far  greater  word 
of  the  world  of  To-morrow  will  be  "  Interna- 
tionalism." Yesterday  the  emerging  peoples 
of  the  new-born  democracies  asserted  them- 
selves in  what  they  lustily  called  their  "  In- 
dependence." To-morrow,  when  the  hori- 
zons of  life  have  been  immeasurably  widened, 
and  when  the  meaning  of  life  has  been  incal- 
culably enriched,  the  dominant  idea  of  the 
world  will  be  broadened  into  "  Inter-depend- 
ence." Already  the  leaders  of  world-opin- 
ion, at  all  the  battle  fronts  of  the  world's 
mind,  have  learned  the  truth  of  the  Christ 
dictum  in  the  realm  of  world  politics,  that  no 
nation  can  live  to  itself  or  can  die  to  itself 
alone. 

And  an  internationalized  world  will  be  the 
outcome  and  the  product  of  the  world  con- 
flict   of    ideas.     It    must  first  exist  in   the 


62  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN   IDEA 

thought  of  the  world's  thinkers,  and  in  minds 
and  hearts  and  consciences  of  the  teachers 
and  students  in  the  schools  and  colleges  and 
universities  of  the  civilized  world. 

This  is  America's  most  urgent  call,  most 
commanding  appeal,  and  most  compelling 
enlistment.  And  in  this  world  service  of  the 
mind  North  America  knows  no  dividing  line. 
Every  school  in  the  United  States  that  puts 
a  premium  on  high  thinking,  that  makes 
truth  its  supreme  objective,  and  character  its 
greatest  achievement,  and  that  holds  honour 
above  success,  and  sends  out  into  the  activi- 
ties of  the  Republic  men  who  cannot  be 
bought  and  who  will  not  lie — that  school 
serves  Canada  as  surely  and  as  loyally  as  it 
serves  the  State  in  which  it  stands. 

Every  college  and  every  university  in 
which  manhood  is  prized  more  highly  than 
money,  in  which  personality  is  gloried  in 
rather  than  endowments,  from  which  leader- 
ship goes  out  into  the  life-centres  of  the  na- 
tion and  returns  not  again  until  it  touches 
the  life-currents  of  the  world — that  college 
cannot  be  shut  in  by  any  geographical  lines, 


IN   THE  WORLD   CONFLICT  OF  IDEAS     63 

or  confined  by  the  range  of  any  national  flag, 
or  restricted  by  the  theological  creeds  of  any 
church.  All  leaders  of  thought,  all  teachers 
of  truth,  all  masters  of  ideas  belong  to  all  the 
world.  Every  man's  fatherland  is  to  the 
student  a  native  country  ;  and  every  foreign 
country  is  to  the  scholar  a  fatherland. 

The  Prepared  Mind 

Preparedness?  Yes.  If  North  America  is 
to  play  her  true  part,  her  promised  part,  in 
the  gigantic  conflict  of  Ideas,  which  will  dis- 
turb and  menace  the  world  long  after  the 
present  war  of  brute  Forces  has  spent  itself, 
it  is  high  time  all  the  institutions  of  learning 
in  these  two  American  nations  made  ready 
for  that  inevitable  struggle. 

But  the  preparedness  for  which  I  plead  on 
this  occasion  and  in  this  place  is  the  pre- 
paredness of  the  American  Mind,  the  pre- 
paredness of  the  American  Conscience,  the 
preparedness  of  the  American  Will. 

Better,  infinitely  better,  to  go  unprepared 
into  the  war  at  the  battle  fronts  of  Europe,  as 
Britain   crossed  the  Channel  unprepared  in 


64  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN   IDEA 

19 14,  and  lined  up  her  little  standing  army 
of  150,000  trained  and  disciplined  veterans 
on  the  fields  of  France,  against  Germany's 
proud  product  of  forty  years — better,  glori- 
ously and  triumphantly  better  to  have  done 
that  in  19 14,  and  to  have  saved  Paris,  even 
at  its  unspeakable  cost,  from  the  heel  of  the 
slaughtering  Hun,  than  for  America,  with  its 
universities  of  culture  and  its  schools  of  re- 
ligion to  line  up  in  the  world  conflict  of  Ideas 
in  191 7  and  in  the  sterner  days  yet  to  come, 
with  an  undisciplined  national  Mind,  a  seared 
national  Conscience,  and  with  an  irresolute 
national  Will. 

The  national  Mind  !  The  national  Con- 
science !  The  national  Will  !  These  are  the 
Verdun  battlements  of  America's  life.  Sur- 
render them  to  the  enemies  of  Truth  and 
Honour  and  Freedom,  and,  no  matter  what 
happens  to  your  battalions  and  your  battle- 
ships, your  nation  will  have  lost  its  soul. 

My  most  earnest  pleading,  therefore,  with 
you,  with  all  citizens  of  the  United  States 
and  of  Canada,  is  for  the  preparedness  of 
all    our  peoples  in  the  things  of  the  mind. 


IN   THE  WORLD   CONFLICT  OF   IDEAS     65 

The  Army  ?  Yes.  The  Navy  ?  Yes.  Fill 
up  the  ranks  of  the  khaki  and  the  blue.  But 
when  our  bullets  and  our  bayonets  have 
done  their  fullest  part,  there  will  still  be  a 
call  for  leadership  in  schools  and  churches 
and  parliaments  of  the  world.  The  des- 
olated war  nations  will  call,  as  never  before, 
for  policies  and  programs  that  make  for 
truth  in  our  diplomacy  and  for  integrity  in 
our  politics.  From  you  and  from  classrooms 
like  yours  must  go  out  that  leadership  of 
social  good-will  and  that  law  of  international 
service,  in  which  alone  is  the  hope  of  Eu- 
rope's redemption,  and  through  which  alone 
can  come  enduring  peace  for  the  world. 

In  the  world  conflict  of  ideas  the  college 
classrooms  are  our  strategic  heights.  Hold 
them  to-day,  and  the  hinterland  of  the  Vimy 
Ridge  of  Truth  will  be  yours  to-morrow. 


LECTURE  III 

THE      NORTH 
AMERICAN  IDEA 


LECTURE  III 

THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  IDEA 

NORTH  AMERICA  among  the  na- 
tions is  more  than  a  continent  of 
geography.  Vital  and  stimulating, 
it  takes  its  place  in  the  life  of  the  world,  a 
World  Idea. 

That  world  idea  which  North  America 
embodies  Is  not  of  North  American  origin. 
It  was  inherited  by  North  America  through 
the  Anglo-Saxon  and  the  Anglo-Celtic 
forebears  of  the  American  people.  It  is 
presented  to  the  world  to-day  in  the  national 
life  and  the  national  history  of  the  two  free 
democracies  that  hold,  and  that  hold  to- 
gether, the  civilized  internationalism  of  the 
North  American  continent,  from  the  Mexican 
border  to  the  North  Pole.  That  North 
American  idea  is  this  :  The  Right  of  a  Free 
People  to  Govern  Themselves. 

A  hundred  ideas,  to  be  sure,  have  found, 

69 


70  THE  NORTH   AMERICAN   IDEA 

and  still  find,  utterance  and  advocacy  in 
North  America.  Since  this  continent  first 
heaved  above  the  wavering  horizon  line  of 
the  world's  history,  every  broken-off  frag- 
ment of  truth,  left  anywhere  on  the  dump- 
heap  of  error,  has,  at  some  time  and  by  some 
adventurous  voyager  on  the  sea  of  doubt, 
been  given  expression  and  a  chance  in  the 
free  American  mind.  But  the  idea  that 
dominates  and  gives  distinction  to  American 
thinking  is  the  resdess  idea  that  people 
ought  to  be  free,  and  that  a  free  people  have 
the  right  to  govern  themselves.  Supremely, 
that  is  the  North  American  idea. 

Mexico,  indeed,  shares  in  the  geography 
of  North  America,  but  not  in  its  idea.  The 
people  of  Mexico  have  not  come  to  their 
own  in  the  North  American  inheritance  of 
democratic  self-government.  Mexico  does 
not  cherish  the  American  standards  of  free- 
dom or  embody  the  North  American  idea. 

Mexico  does  make  boast  of  a  Liberty  Bell, 
and  does  recite  proudly  a  Declaration  of  In- 
dependence. More  than  a  hundred  years  ago, 
on  the  night  of  September  i6,  1810,  the  bell 


THE  NORTH   AMERICAN   IDEA  71 

in  the  church  tower  at  Dolores  was  rung  by 
the  parish  priest,  Miguel  Hidalgo,  who  then 
pronounced  the  grito  of  Mexico's  independ- 
ence of  Spain.  One  hundred  years  from 
that  very  hour,  at  eleven  o'clock  on  the  night 
of  September  16,  1910,  as  marking  the 
climax  of  the  centennial  celebration  of  Mexi- 
can independence,  from  the  balcony  of  the 
Palace  Nacional  in  Mexico  City,  facing  a 
jubilating  half-million  of  madly  patriotic 
Mexicans,  who  filled  the  brilliantly  illumi- 
nated Zocalo  and  crowded  all  the  avenues,  I 
was  witness  of  the  pathetic  stage-play,  when 
the  venerable  President,  Porfirio  Diaz,  rang 
the  very  same  Liberty  Bell  and  repeated 
Hidalgo's  historic  grito : 

"  Viva  Independencia ! 
Viva  la  Constitucion  ! 
Viva  Mexico  !  " 

Mexico  called  itself,  and  still  calls  itself, 
a  republic.  Mexico  professes  to  honour  the 
Liberty  Bell,  and  to  prize  the  rights  of 
national  independence.  But  at  bottom  its 
clamour  about  freedom  is  all  make-believe. 
The  realities  of  law  and  of  justice  and  of  free 


72  THE  NORTH   AMERICAN   IDEA 

government  are  as  far  removed  from  the 
common  people  of  Mexico  to-day  as  they 
were  in  the  old  days  of  the  Spanish  autocracy. 
In  the  Republic  of  Mexico  citizenship  does 
not  mean,  and  never  has  meant,  the  right  of 
a  free  people  to  govern  themselves.  The 
North  American  idea  as  yet  finds  no  directing 
and  controlling  place  in  the  Mexican  mind. 

The  Idea's  Opportunity 

It  is  in  the  United  States  and  in  Canada, 
the  two  self-governing  American  nations  of 
the  Anglo-Saxon  and  the  Anglo-Celtic  blood 
and  background,  that  the  North  American 
idea  has  had  its  opportunity.  The  American 
Republic  and  the  Canadian  Dominion  agree 
in  this:  they  each  gave  a  chance  to  the 
released  and  irrepressible  idea  of  freedom, 
the  idea  which  disturbed  the  autocracies  of 
Europe,  and  began  their  overthrow,  long  be- 
fore America  played  any  part  in  the  history 
of  the  world. 

These  two  North  American  democracies 
are,  indeed,  Europe's  second  chance.  And 
North  America's  real  title  to  greatness  must 


THE  NORTH  AMERICAN   IDEA  73 

be  read  in  the  light  which  these  two  nations, 
each  in  its  own  way,  and  both  together  in 
their  common  internationalism,  give  back  to 
the  fatherlands  and  the  motherlands,  not  of 
our  American  peoples  alone,  but  of  our  ideals 
of  freedom  and  our  principles  of  justice. 
North  America  inherited  a  world  idea,  not 
for  her  own  sake  alone,  but  for  the  world's. 
The  United  States  and  Canada  are  trustees 
for  all  humanity.  Before  the  world's  judg- 
ment seat  we  must  give  account  of  our 
stewardship. 

It  was  in  the  power  of  their  common  ideas, 
not  by  the  blood  of  their  common  ancestry, 
that  the  American  colonies  of  Britain  first 
separated  in  their  thought  from  their  mother 
country,  and  then  united  among  themselves 
in  their  common  struggle  for  the  realities  of 
political  self-government,  in  the  last  half  of 
the  eighteenth  century.  And  so  it  was  that 
the  American  Revolution  and  the  American 
Republic  were  both  alike  the  product  and 
the  purpose  of  ideas,  of  vital  and  energizing 
world  ideas. 

And  it  is  by  their  community  of  dominant 


74  THE  NORTH   AMERICAN   IDEA 

ideas,  and  not  simply  because  blood  is 
thicker  than  water,  that  these  two  self- 
governing  nations  of  North  America  are 
bound  together,  indissolubly  bound  together, 
no  matter  what  war  spectres  may  hover 
about,  for  the  defense  and  for  the  supremacy 
of  our  North  American  civilization.  Our 
bond  of  union  is  our  North  American  idea. 

More  than  that.  It  is  by  the  ties  of  their 
great  ideas,  not  by  the  secret  diplomacies  or 
by  the  partisan  policies  of  their  Presidents  or 
Premiers  that  the  peoples  of  the  United 
States  and  Canada  are  bound  up  in  the 
great  bundle  of  life  with  all  the  free  peoples 
of  the  English-speaking  fraternity  over  all 
the  world.  The  idea  of  freedom  is  the  badge 
of  their  North  American  brotherhood. 

Its  World  Reach 

And  wider  still.  When  the  ideas  of  per- 
sonal liberty,  and  of  political  self-govern- 
ment, and  of  national  integrity,  are  made  the 
inalienable  right,  the  unchallenged  heritage, 
of  all  people  on  every  continent ;  when  every 
little  nationality,  distinctive   and  free  in  its 


THE   NORTH   AMERICAN   IDEA  75 

own  individual  life,  shall  feel  secure  against 
the  ambition  and  the  greed  of  the  large  and 
the  powerful  ;  and  when  the  North  American 
idea,  cleansed  from  the  corrosions  of  cyni- 
cism and  prejudice,  and  from  the  hard  crust- 
ings  of  selfishness,  shall  have  become  the 
World  idea,  inspiring  the  world's  thinking, 
and  organizing  the  world's  power  in  defense 
of  the  world  right  of  every  free-minded 
people  everywhere  to  govern  themselves — 
when  that  day  of  the  larger  idea  dawns,  then 
shall  the  fraternity  of  the  English-speaking 
world,  the  whole  commonwealth  of  the  Brit= 
ish  Empire  and  the  whole  commonwealth  of 
the  American  Republic,  come  together  into 
their  full  membership  in  the  world  brother- 
hood of  all  nations,  sharers  together  in  that 
world  commonwealth  of  all  peoples,  in  which 
the  welfare  of  each  shall  be  the  common  obli- 
gation of  all,  and  the  prosperity  of  the  great- 
est shall  depend  on  the  perfect  freedom  and 
equal  justice  of  the  least.  In  that  wider 
sweep  of  the  world  life,  and  in  that  farther 
range  of  the  world  mind,  the  North  American 
idea  shall  find  itself  and  shall  have  its  chance. 


76  THE  NORTH   A^IERICAN   IDEA 

These  words  of  wide  range  and  of  large 
meaning  I  speak  with  the  utmost  deliberate- 
ness.  I  speak  them  at  a  time  when  the 
whole  sky  of  all  the  world  is  filled  with  the 
fierce  shriekings  of  a  world  war.  I  speak 
them  as  a  Canadian,  while  all  Canada  is 
straining  at  every  nerve,  and  the  sons  of 
Canada,  by  the  hundreds  and  the  thousands, 
are  falling  in  the  trenches  and  at  the  battle 
fronts  of  Europe,  fighting  and  falling  as  rep- 
resentatives of  North  American  democracy, 
in  defense  of  this  very  North  American  idea, 
the  right  of  the  free  people  of  Belgium  to 
live  their  own  life  and  to  govern  them- 
selves. 

And  why  do  I  so  speak,  and  at  such  a 
time?  It  is  because  I  would  have  you  men 
and  women  of  this  University,  and  all  who 
may  hear  these  lectures,  or  who  may  read 
them  on  the  printed  page,  believe  this  one 
thing,  and  believe  it  supremely,  that  in  the 
long  run  and  in  the  ultimate  end,  dominion 
among  the  nations  and  the  victory  of  the 
world  shall  not  be  with  the  dripping  sword, 
or   with  the  eighteen-inch   gun,  or  with  the 


THE   NORTH   AMERICAN   IDEA  77 

slaughtering  squadrons  in  the  trenches  of 
death,  but  victory,  the  enduring  victory  that 
overcometh  the  world,  shall  be  with  the 
spiritual  powers  of  the  free  peoples,  who,  for 
themselves  and  for  their  neighbours,  are 
loyal  to  the  world  idea. 

Ideas  are  immortal,  not  brute  forces,  and 
not  armed  legions.  When  the  last  hundred 
thousand  shall  have  fired  their  last  shot  and 
fallen  into  their  last  grave,  then  shall  world 
ideas  gather  up  the  shattered  fragments  of 
the  world's  civilization,  and  piece  together 
the  violated  enactments  of  world  law,  so  that 
out  of  the  wreck  and  ruin  it  seems  now  there 
may  come  a  new  world  of  free  nations,  in 
which  every  free  people  shall  have  the  right 
to  govern  themselves.  For  that  far-off  divine 
event  the  North  American  idea  was  released 
in  the  mind  of  the  world. 

The  Birth  of  the  Idea 

The  North  American  idea  was  born  not  in 
America,  but  in  Europe.  It  is  the  gift  to 
America  from  generations  long  dead  and 
from   lands  beyond  the  seas.     To  this  day 


78  THE  NORTH   AMERICAN   IDEA 

and  in  both  nations  on  this  continent,  the  idea 
of  government  of  the  people  by  the  people  and 
for  the  people,  the  political  idea  of  government 
by  representation,  is  called  Anglo-Saxon. 

That  very  name,  Anglo-Saxon,  runs  our 
American  line  of  inheritance  back  through 
more  than  fifteen  hundred  years.  It  takes 
us  to  the  England  we  know  to-day,  that 
south  country  of  ancient  Britannia,  in  which 
the  seafaring  Teutons  from  beyond  the  North 
Sea  founded  their  homes  in  the  last  half  of 
the  fifth  century,  and  to  which  they  gave 
their  own  racial  name,  "  Engla-land."  And 
back  of  Britannia  we  must  go  to  the  home- 
lands of  those  Angles- — or  Engles — and  Sax- 
ons, and  there  in  the  rude  life  of  Germania, 
while  all  the  rest  of  Europe  was  broken  and 
barbarized  under  the  despotic  imperialism  of 
the  Rome  of  the  Caesars,  the  primitive  idea 
of  modern  democracy,  which  we  call  Anglo- 
Saxon,  was  born.  There  the  impulses  were 
released  which,  through  the  long  centuries  to 
come,  were  destined  to  recreate  the  Britannia 
of  the  Celts,  to  create  the  America  we  know, 
and  to  breathe  the  soul  of  freedom  into  the 


THE   NORTH   AMERICAN   IDEA  79 

English-speaking  world.    That  was  the  birth- 
place of  the  North  American  idea. 

There  was  a  time  in  the  United  States 
when  it  was  deemed  safe  politics  and  sound 
educational  practice  to  start  the  history  of 
America  with  the  Revolutionary  War.  Gen- 
erations of  young  Americans  were  led  to 
think  of  George  Washington,  not  only  as 
the  father  of  his  country,  but  as  the  father  of 
all  free  countries  everywhere.  The  Declara- 
tion of  Independence  was  magnified  so  as  to 
be  regarded  as  the  first  real  protest  of  free- 
dom humanity  ever  made.  Twice  over  in 
recent  months  have  I  heard  professors  of 
history  in  great  American  universities  con- 
fess that  the  facts  of  American  history  taught 
them  as  fundamental  in  school  and  college 
they  had  to  tear  up  by  the  roots,  when,  as 
serious  students,  they  came  into  the  class- 
rooms and  libraries  of  the  university.  The 
notion  that  a  North  American  idea  was  not 
born  in  New  England  or  in  Virginia,  or  in 
some  other  breeding  place  of  the  Republic, 
would  have  been  rankest  heresy  in  those 
days  of  America's  intellectual  isolation. 


8o  THE  NORTH   AMERICAN   IDEA 

This  Republic  was  born  in  the  travail 
pains  of  a  political  revolution.  For  long  it 
was  deemed  prudent,  as  helping  to  make  the 
achievements  of  that  revolution  secure,  to 
put  the  emphasis  for  the  child  and  for  the 
nation  on  the  historical  facts  of  national 
independence  and  separation.  The  line  was 
not  always  drawn  between  popular  history 
and  popular  fiction.  At  the  time  when  his- 
tory itself  was  still  concerned  with  the  doings 
of  kings  and  conquerors,  and  while  America 
had  almost  no  war  annals  of  its  own  to  pro- 
vide purple  patches  for  the  makers  of  school 
text-books,  and  when  elections  fought  over 
again  the  old  battles  of  the  Revolution,  or  of 
the  War  of  1812,  or  of  the  Civil  War,  it  is  not 
surprising  that  school  histories  were  some- 
times written  with  the  bias  and  in  the  temper 
of  political  pamphlets.  "  Forget  it  "  is  the 
frequent  injunction  of  the  history  professor 
to-day. 

And,  for  the  students  of  history  in  the  col- 
leges and  universities,  that  emphatic  and 
sometimes  impatient  exhortation,  "  Forget 
it,"  is  neither  unwise  nor  unnecessary,  if  we 


THE  NORTH   AMERICAN   IDEA  8l 

would  indeed  save  ourselves,  and  save  the 
coming  generation,  from  the  conceit  and  the 
arrogance  which  ignorance  and  prejudice  al- 
ways breed.  In  the  United  States  and  in 
Canada  we  wrong  ourselves,  and  we  lower 
our  national  dignity,  when  we  isolate  our- 
selves and  our  nations  from  the  great  cur- 
rents of  world  history,  and  shut  out  of  our 
national  background  those  heroic  struggles 
up  from  bondage  to  liberty,  which  mark  the 
whole  winding  and  turbulent  course,  through 
the  centuries,  of  what  we  now  proudly  call 
the  North  American  idea. 

But  the  growth  to  maturity  of  the  United 
States  is  indicated  by  nothing  more  accu- 
rately than  by  the  public  recognition  of  the 
real  function  of  history  and  historical  writ- 
ings, and  by  the  important  part  intelligent 
self-criticism  begins  to  play  in  the  life  and 
literature  of  the  American  people.  In  the 
early  days  of  the  Republic,  while  the  mind 
of  the  nation  was  still  in  its  juvenile  stage, 
the  political  campaigner  and  the  lyceum  lec- 
turer, if  they  would  win  applause  from  "  the 
million  gods  of  the  gallery,"  were  obliged  to 


82  THE   NORTH   AMERICAN   IDEA 

wave  frantically  the  Stars  and  Stripes,  to 
shout  with  lingering  emphasis  the  great 
names  of  Independence  days,  and  to  chal- 
lenge all  the  world  with  imitations  of  the 
choice  bits  of  flamboyant  rhetoric  in  the  elo- 
cution reciters.  And  the  popular  novelist,  if 
he  touched  events  in  the  days  of  General 
Washington,  or  in  the  days  of  Commodore 
Perry,  found  it  useful  to  make  every  Ameri- 
can a  gentleman  and  a  hero,  while  the  rest 
of  the  world  was  a  bully  or  a  fool. 

That  day  is  past  or  is  fast  passing.  When 
this  world  war  shall  have  told  its  story  that 
day  for  the  United  states  will  have  gone  for- 
ever. The  critical  study  of  the  material  of 
American  history,  and  this  experience  in 
actual  world  war,  have  changed  the  point  of 
view  of  the  American  mind.  The  politician 
who  expects  to  win  votes  because  he  declares 
the  United  States  "can  lick  all  creation," 
never  again  will  be  elected  to  Congress,  or, 
if  elected,  he  will  find  his  low  level  in  the  in- 
significant minority,  when  the  hour  of  testing 
comes  and  the  crisis  of  the  nation  is  on. 

Events  of  the  past  twelvemonth  in  the  his- 


THE  NORTH   AMERICAN   IDEA  83 

tory  of  this  American  Republic  have  been 
critical,  not  for  this  Republic  alone,  but  for 
the  cause  of  representative  institutions  every- 
where. It  seemed  at  times  as  though,  in  the 
free  and  fierce  clashings  of  political  parties, 
the  nation  had  lost  its  bearings,  and  that 
democracy  itself  would  be  disproved.  But, 
when  the  fury  passed  and  the  red  dust  set- 
tled, it  was  plain  that  the  stars  still  shone. 

These  months  of  controversy  and  conflict 
in  the  United  States  have  been  writing  the 
noblest  certificate  democracy  ever  received. 
The  people  have  been  free.  Discussion  has 
been  unshackled  on  the  platform  and  in  the 
press.  The  opinions  of  the  street  have  found 
utterance  in  Congress,  and  the  maddest  con- 
troversies at  Washington  have  been  pub- 
lished abroad  on  the  street  in  the  pioneer 
villages  and  in  the  mining  towns  of  the 
mountains.  But  now,  at  the  dawning  of  the 
day,  the  new  day  of  soul-testing  for  this  Re- 
public, the  day  of  the  Republic's  entrance 
into  the  world's  war,  the  nation  stands  before 
the  world  unashamed  and  unafraid. 

This  day  is  the  testimony  of  experience  to 


84     THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  IDEA 

the  judgment  of  the  Fathers  of  Independ- 
ence, a  hundred  and  fifty  years  after,  the 
testimony  which  the  autocrats  of  the  world 
cannot  gainsay — that  a  free  people  may  be 
trusted  to  govern  themselves. 

The  Idea  in  Conflict 

The  political  idea  of  government  through 
representation,  released  into  the  world's  mind 
in  northern  Germania,  became  an  idea  in 
conflict.  A  vital  idea  always  disturbs  the 
clod  in  which  it  is  set  free.  It  ceases  to  dis- 
turb only  when  it  ceases  to  live. 

The  Anglo-Saxon  idea  of  representative 
government,  astir  two  thousand  years  ago, 
in  its  primitive  form,  in  the  pagan  mind  of 
the  remote  northern  seclusion  of  the  Ger- 
manic world,  untouched  by  the  culture  of 
Greece  or  by  the  autocratic  militarism  of  the 
Caesars  and  the  Roman  Empire,  has  been 
the  inspiring  idea  in  all  the  history  of  the 
English-speaking  world.  It  still  is  the  dis- 
turbing spark  in  the  heavy  and  benumbing 
clod  of  the  world's  despotism  everywhere. 

As  1  was  pondering  this  fact  in  the  early 


THE  NORTH   AMERICAN   IDEA  85 

history  of  the  institutions  of  poHtical  free- 
dom recently,  I  chanced  upon  some  perti- 
nent paragraphs  by  an  American  historical 
scholar,  a  son  of  the  State  of  Kentucky, 
whose  right  to  speak  on  a  question  in  the 
science  of  government  has  been  recognized, 
not  in  the  United  States  alone,  but  also  in 
the  two  greatest  universities  of  Germany, 
one  whose  neutrality  of  mind  is  not  ques- 
tioned, and  whose  services  as  an  expert  is 
being  proved  this  very  year  in  the  centres  of 
light  at  home  and  by  the  foremost  men  in 
China — Robert  McNutt  McElroy,  Professor 
of  American  History  in  Princeton  University. 
Dr.  McElroy's  article  on  "  The  Prussian 
War  Against  Teuton  Ideals"  was  written 
after  careful  and  sympathetic  study  of  the 
situation  in  Germany  at  first-hand.  It  was 
published  in  an  American  magazine  months 
after  the  war  in  Europe  broke  out,  and  while 
the  United  States  was  still  neutral,  and 
Count  von  Bernstorff,  the  German  Ambassa- 
dor, was  still  accepted  at  Washington.  I 
quote  only  sentences  pertinent  to  the  special 
point  here  under  discussion — the  birth  of  the 


86  THE  NORTH   AMERICAN   IDEA 

idea  of  representative  government,  and  its 
conflict  for  "a  place  in  the  sun."  "The 
grandest  political  idea  ever  produced,"  which 
Professor  McElroy  calls  "Teutonic"  and 
"  German,"  I  venture  to  call  Anglo-Saxon. 
In  its  developed  form,  as  the  world  knows  it, 
I  would  now  name  that  idea  "  British."  With 
explanations,  and  for  the  purposes  of  these 
lectures,  I  would  rename  that  idea,  "  North 
American." 

"  One  of  the  saddest  features  of  this  war 
of  the  world,"  says  Professor  McElroy,  "  is 
the  fact  that  the  German  people  are  dying 
by  thousands  in  an  effort  to  check  the  spread 
of  the  grandest  political  idea  ever  produced 
— and  one  which  they  themselves  origi- 
nated. 

"The  idea  of  representative  government, 
so  far  as  its  history  can  be  traced,  first  ap- 
peared in  the  forests  of  Germany,  and  has 
long  been  known  among  political  theorists 
as  the  Teutonic  idea.  Wherever  we  find 
the  Teutons  in  the  earliest  days  of  European 
history  we  find  not  only  the  primary  as- 
sembly,   which    had    been    familiar    to   the 


THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  IDEA     87 

people  of  ancient  Greece  and  Rome,  but 
also  rough  attempt  at  representative  as- 
sembly. Rome  had  known  nothing  of  the 
idea  of  representative  government,  except 
the  military  representation  of  a  government 
above  and  independent  of  the  people.  With 
the  coming  of  the  Germans  into  history, 
however,  there  appears  a  new  idea — namely, 
that  the  people  have  a  right  to  be  heard  in 
the  affairs  of  State,  the  common  people  as 
well  as  the  nobles,  and  this  through  repre- 
sentatives whom  they  have  selected.  The 
precise  difference  between  a  modern  and  an 
ancient  State  is  marked  by  the  presence  or 
absence  of  this  idea  which  the  Germanic  race 
brought  into  history. 

"  By  degrees,  as  the  Germanic  conquests 
over  the  Roman  Empire  extended,  the 
Teutonic  idea  in  government  took  root ;  and 
soon  the  germs  of  representative  institutions 
appeared  almost  everywhere  in  Europe. 
From  that  day  to  the  present  those  gifted 
individuals  whose  eyes  can  discern  the  great 
forces  of  history  have  eagerly  watched  the 
struggle  between  the  Roman  idea  of  Empire 


88  THE  NORTH   AMERICAN   IDEA 

by  force  and  the  German  idea  of  Empire  by 
representation. 

"  Gradually  the  Teutonic  idea  was  beaten 
upon  the  continent.  The  long  absence  of 
successive  German  Emperors  in  Italy,  chas- 
ing the  rainbow  of  the  crown  of  the  Caesars, 
left  their  retainers  free  to  war  among  them- 
selves for  supremacy.  By  degrees  the  old 
gospel  of  force  overcame  the  new  gospel  of 
representative  government,  and  Germany 
ceased  to  be  a  nation  even  in  name.  In 
other  parts  of  the  continent,  also,  except  in 
the  highlands  of  Switzerland  and  the  low- 
lands of  Holland,  the  Teutonic  idea  of 
Government  was  gradually  overwhelmed  by 
the  Roman  idea.  Caesar's  spirit  again  ruled 
the  continent,  and  representative  government 
was  dead. 

"  In  the  British  Isles,  however,  it  still  lived. 
The  Germanic  tribes  who  had  conquered 
Romanized  Britain  had  come  as  barbarians, 
bringing  the  Teutonic  idea,  untainted  by 
contact  with  Rome.  From  Hengist's  land- 
ing in  449  to  the  landing  of  Augustine  and 
his  forty  Roman  priests  in  597,  English  soil 


THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  IDEA     89 

nourished  the  pure  Germanic  idea  in  Govern- 
ment unhindered.  The  county  meeting  had 
come  to  maturity — a  meeting  where  there  sat 
representatives  from  each  township,  speaking 
and  voting  for  their  constituents.  The  Ger- 
manic idea,  beaten  in  its  native  forests,  had 
flourished  here  in  the  seclusion  of  the  British 
Isles  for  almost  a  century  and  a  half,  and 
could  not  be  killed. 

"  As  the  years  passed,  one  king  after  an- 
other arose,  filled  with  the  Roman  idea  of 
government  from  above,  and  strove  to  imitate 
his  brother  kings  across  the  Channel — to 
reestablish  the  gospel  of  force,  and  reassert 
the  theory  that  kings  derive  their  just  rights 
from  God,  and  not  from  men.  King  John 
dared  to  assert  this  ancient  idea,  and  was 
forced  to  face  his  infuriated  barons  at  Run- 
nymede.  Henry  III  reverted  to  it,  and  the 
grim  determined  figure  of  Simon  de  Montfort 
scattered  his  forces  at  Lewes,  and  then  issued 
the  summons  which  gave  nationality  to  the 
Germanic  idea  in  England.  In  1265  the 
people's  representatives,  whom  Earl  Simon 
had  summoned,  assembled  at  Westminster, 


90  THE  NORTH   AMERICAN   IDEA 

and  the  idea  of  government  by  a  Parliament 
representing  all  the  people  of  England — 
nobility,  clergy  and  commonalty — took  its 
place  in  history.  Against  it  the  despotic 
Tudors,  the  treacherous  Stuarts,  and  the  dull 
Hanoverians  struggled  in  vain.  Simon's 
Parliament  had  given  an  ideal  of  govern- 
ment to  England  which  could  not  be  moved." 

The  Lesson  of  the  Conflict 

What  the  Princeton  professor  of  American 
history  describes  as  "  the  saddest  feature  in 
this  war  of  the  world "  is  indeed  history's 
oldest  story,  and  its  most  persistent  warning. 
The  present  effort  of  the  people  of  Germany, 
led  by  their  evil  counsellors,  to  check  and 
destroy  the  world  idea  of  self-government, 
which  the  Angles  and  Saxons  and  Jutes 
carried  over  from  the  remote  provinces  of 
the  Germanic  world,  to  the  Celtic  tribes  of 
ancient  Britain,  fifteen  centuries  ago,  and  the 
price  modern  Germany  is  now  paying,  and 
must  pay  yet  more,  for  this  modern  treason 
to  that  ancient  faith, — that  "  saddest  feature  " 
is  in  accordance  with  history's  persistent  and 


THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  IDEA     91 

almost  unfailing  rule.  In  the  end  vital  ideas 
triumph  over  brute  forces. 

Again  and  again,  in  the  world's  historic 
conflicts,  the  final  conquests  went,  not  to  the 
side  that  commanded  the  largest  armies  and 
the  strongest  forts,  but  to  the  side  whose 
ideas  were  strongest,  most  vital,  and  most 
persistently  loyal  to  the  law  of  good-will  and 
to  the  ideal  of  human  service.  Roman  arms 
triumphed  over  Greece,  but  in  the  end  Greek 
culture  permeated  and  elevated  Roman  life 
and  literature. 

The  rough  and  sturdy  Teuton  tribes  swept 
down  from  their  hills  and  vanquished  the  de- 
generate legions  of  the  Roman  Empire,  but 
Roman  ideas  of  Imperialism  and  of  military 
autocracy  took  root  in  the  Teuton  mind,  and 
in  the  end  ideas  were  victorious  over  phys- 
ical force. 

A  hundred  years  ago  Napoleon  conceived 
himself  the  Caesar  of  his  world,  and  in  the 
overthrow  of  his  mad  world-ambition  the 
power  of  Prussia  had  a  hand.  But  in  the 
end,  when  Waterloo  passed  sentence,  when 
St.    Helena    executed  judgment,    when   the 


92  THE  NORTH  AMERICAN   IDEA 

Corsican  himself  was  dead,  Napoleonism 
was  stronger  than  Napoleon's  armies,  and, 
through  the  mind  of  Clausewitz  and  the 
master  mind  of  Bismarck,  and  through  men 
of  Hke  mind  who  were  their  disciples,  the 
Napoleonic  idea  of  Will  to  Power  gained 
control  of  the  German  mind  in  its  conflict 
with  the  Anglo-Saxon  idea  of  the  Will  to 
Serve,  brute  Force  vanquished  love,  and  the 
Kaiser  of  to-day  became,  in  his  own  and  his 
people's  mind,  the  Caesar  of  two  thousand 
years  ago. 

In  very  truth  one  of  the  saddest  features  of 
this  world  war  is  that  in  the  crisis-conflict  of 
world  ideas  Germany  has  forsaken  the  ideal- 
ism of  her  own  prophets  and  philosophers 
and  poets,  and  is  lined  up  on  the  side  of  the 
disproved  despotism  of  Roman  force. 

And  the  lesson  of  it  all,  and  of  all  the  con- 
flicts of  the  ages,  the  stern  warning  for  all 
the  Dominions  of  Britain  and  also  for  the 
United  States  of  America,  is  that  neither  an 
invincible  navy  with  an  army  to  match,  nor 
a  national  neutrality,  that  seemed  safe  by 
sea  and  by  land,  could  by  itself  save  either 


THE   NORTH   AMERICAN   IDEA  93 

or  both  of  these  nations  from  the  fatal  work- 
ings of  history's  inexorable  rule.  The  Anglo- 
Saxon  idea,  the  British  idea,  the  North  Amer- 
ican idea,  the  World  idea,  that  a  free  people 
must  be  left  free  and  be  kept  free — that  idea 
cannot  live  merely  as  an  abstract  idea  alone. 
It  must  find  release  in  life.  It  must  domi- 
nate the  thinking  and  organize  the  service 
and  direct  the  activities  of  all  who  would  be 
free. 

That  conflict  of  ideas  is  on.  It  is  always 
on.  The  North  American  idea  must  fight 
for  its  life  at  all  the  fateful  battle  fronts  of  the 
world's  mind. 


LECTURE  IV 

THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  IDEA 
IN  THE  AMERICAN  REPUBLIC 


LECTURE  IV 

THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  IDEA  IN 
THE  AMERICAN  REPUBLIC 

THROUGHOUT  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury the  Republic  of  the  United 
States  loomed  large  and  still  larger 
in  the  eye  of  the  world,  as  the  expression  and 
the  custodian  of  the  North  American  Mea. 
The  heart  of  the  world,  generation  after  gen- 
eration, in  all  the  struggling  nationalities  of 
Europe,  was  filled  with  fresh  hope,  even  when 
hope  itself  almost  seemed  to  be  dead,  by 
reason  of  America's  declared  judgment  that 
a  free  people  have  a  right  to  be  kept  free  and 
to  govern  themselves.  Into  the  thickest 
darkness  of  the  very  blackest  days  of  Euro- 
pean autocracy  in  the  nineteenth  century, 
some  javelins  of  light  from  America's  Dec- 
laration of  Independence  had  penetrated  like 
flashes  of  forked  lightning,  and  never  again 

97 


98  THE  NORTH   AMERICAN   IDEA 

was  Europe  without  a  witness  and  a  fore- 
gleam  of  the  coming  day  of  the  world's 
democracy. 

Many  Americans  themselves,  during  the 
first  century  or  more  of  the  Republic,  were 
prone  to  think  of  the  Revolutionary  War  as 
wholly  and  only  an  American  affair.  For 
them  its  geography  spread  over  only  the 
American  Colonies,  from  New  England  to 
the  Carolinas.  For  them,  Lexington  and 
Bunker  Hill  were  its  shrines,  and  its  monu- 
ments were  Valley  Forge  and  Yorktown. 
Its  great  names  with  which  their  orators  con- 
jured, and  the  heroes  to  whom  their  history- 
writers  paid  due  honour,  were  George  Wash- 
ington and  his  half-dozen  patriot-statesmen, 
and  his  less  than  half-dozen  soldier-saints, 
with  his  honoured  allies  from  France,  the 
gallant  Marquis  de  Lafayette  and  Count 
Rochambeau  at  their  head.  For  Young 
America  the  achievement  of  the  Revolution, 
its  matchless  contribution  to  the  greatness  of 
the  world,  was  gathered  up  in  the  founding 
of  the  American  Republic  as  "the  land  of  the 
free  and  the  home  of  the  brave." 


IN   THE   AMERICAN   REPUBLIC  99 

America's  Inheritance  from  Britain 

But  in  reality  tlie  American  Revolution 
was  British  before  it  was  American.  Its  tap- 
root stretched  far  back  through  England's 
political  conflicts  into  Anglo-Saxon  soil.  Its 
efficient  cause  was  the  cause  of  every  great 
revolution  in  British  history. 

The  Declaration  of  American  Independ- 
ence was  indeed  only  one  incident  in  that 
noble  series  of  the  charters  of  freedom,  which 
knits  together  the  successive  ages  of  Eng- 
lish-speaking civilization.  The  Habeas  Cor- 
pus, the  Petition  of  Rights,  and,  back  of  all, 
Magna  Charta  itself,  were  its  needful  pre- 
cursors, Philadelphia,  with  its  Independence 
Hall,  and  its  1776,  answers  back  across  the 
centuries  to  Runnymede  and  its  assembly  of 
resolute  barons  who  faced  King  John  in  1215. 
The  Fathers  of  American  independence 
were,  indeed,  born  in  the  American  Colonies, 
but  its  true  sires,  the  Fathers  after  the  spirit, 
were  the  men,  most  of  them  forgotten,  who 
kept  the  faith  of  democracy  against  despots 
and  kings,  in  the  armies  of  the  Common- 
wealth,  on   the  battle-fields  of   the   Scottish 


lOO         THE  NORTH  AMERICAN   IDEA 

Covenant,  through  the  disheartening  strug- 
gles of  Irish  nationaUty,  and  for  well-nigh  a 
thousand  years  in  the  assemblies  and  the 
Parliaments  of  the  Common  People  of  Eng= 
land. 

The  battles  of  the  Revolutionary  War 
were,  indeed,  fought  on  American  soil.  The 
victories  of  the  "  embattled  farmers "  were 
American  victories.  The  "  sound  which  was 
heard  round  the  world  "  carried  an  American 
accent.  But  the  spirit  of  it  all,  the  spirit  that 
made  George  Washington  a  world  hero,  that 
gave  to  him  such  infinite  patience  in  the  face 
of  colonial  selfishness  and  indifference,  and 
such  heroic  endurance  that  faltered  not,  even 
when  Patriots  deserted  and  Congress  with- 
held supplies — that  unconquerable  Washing- 
ton spirit  was  the  unquenched  spirit  of 
AnglO'Saxon  democracy,  as  it  lived  in  the 
Englishmen  of  England  whose  blood  was  in 
Washington's  veins :  the  spirit  that  made 
Cromwell  a  terror  to  English  tyrants  and 
that  set  Wellington  a  rock  immovable  to 
English  mobs. 

Through  all  the  decades  of  Colonial  dis- 


IN  THE  AMERICAN   REPUBLIC         lOI 

content  in  America,  giving  point  to  every 
protest  and  emphasis  to  every  appeal,  tiiere 
were  those  in  Britain,  the  greatest  of  her 
statesmen  and  the  noblest  of  her  citizens, 
who  made  America's  fight  for  the  larger  free- 
dom their  own.  And  when  a  half-mad  King 
with  his  half-puppet  Cabinet — the  King  half- 
mad  because  his  Prussianized  notions  of 
Divine-right  arrogance  were  opposed  by  the 
human-right  of  British  democracy,  and  his 
Cabinet  half-puppet  because  the  British  idea 
of  responsible  government,  in  the  Reform 
Bill  of  1832,  had  not  yet  been  born  into  the 
world — when  such  a  King  and  such  a  Gov- 
ernment made  war  with  their  own  colonies 
and  kinsmen  inevitable,  it  was  in  an  insane 
disregard  of  the  acknowledged  essentials  of 
British  liberties  at  home.  Edmund  Burke 
spoke  words  of  the  soundest  political  phi- 
losophy in  1775  when  he  declared  that  "the 
characteristic  mark  and  seal  of  British  free- 
dom "  is  in  the  inseparable  union  of  taxation 
with  representation.  And  against  the  half- 
German  King  and  his  half-Junker  council- 
lors, Burke  threw  his  soundly  Anglo-Saxon 


I02  THE  NORTH   AMERICAN   IDEA 

challenge  in  denunciation  of  Parliament's 
rough-shod  disloyalty  to  its  own  Anglo- 
Saxon  heritage  : 

"  In  order  to  prove  that  the  Americans 
have  no  right  to  their  liberties  we  are  every 
day  trying  to  subvert  the  maxims  which  pre- 
serve the  whole  spirit  of  our  own.  To  prove 
that  the  Americans  ought  not  to  be  free,  we 
are  obliged  to  depreciate  the  value  of  free- 
dom itself." 

And  to  this  day,  and  not  in  Britain  alone, 
but  in  every  one  of  the  British  Dominions, 
the  slogan  of  political  liberalism  is  the  his- 
toric battle-cry :  "  Taxation  without  repre- 
sentation is  tyranny." 

The  Voice  of  Chatham 

When  George  III  staked  the  security  of 
his  own  crown  on  his  policy  of  the  subjuga- 
tion of  the  American  Colonies,  he  committed 
royal  suicide,  because  he  denied  the  essen- 
tials of  British  freedom,  and  defied  the  great- 
est tribune  of  the  British  people.  Greater 
than  Burke,  greater  than  Fox,  was  that 
prophet-voice  of  the   North   American   idea, 


IN   THE   AMERICAN   REPUBLIC  IO3 

the  elder  Pitt.  The  brilliant  Lord  Rosebery 
in  his  "  Life  of  Chatham  "  calls  him  "  the  su- 
preme statesman  of  his  country."  And  su- 
preme he  was,  through  a  whole  generation, 
as  herald  of  the  new  day  of  British  freedom : 
most  supreme  when,  despite  the  haughtiness 
of  the  King  and  the  folly  of  the  Government, 
he  uttered,  in  1777,  the  deathless  words 
which  still  echo  through  the  musty  annals  of 
the  House  of  Lords  : 

"  If  I  were  an  American,  as  I  am  an  Eng- 
lishman, while  a  foreign  troop  was  landed  in 
my  country,  I  never  would  lay  down  my 
arms,  never  !  never  !  never  I  " 

The  thunder  of  Chatham's  speech,  which 
resounded  through  Britain  like  the  voice  of 
Sinai,  is  in  the  same  note  as  that  which  rang 
through  the  Virginia  Convention  of  1775, 
when  the  Celtic  soul  of  Patrick  Henry  came 
to  its  immortality  in  words  of  warning,  which, 
to  some  thoughtful  Americans  within  the  past 
two  years  of  enforced  neutrality  that  could 
not  be  neutral,  may  have  had  a  strangely 
modern  significance  : 

"  Gentlemen  may  cry,  Peace,  Peace  ;  but 


I04         THE  NORTH  AMERICAN   IDEA 

there  can  be  no  peace.  The  war  is  actually 
begun.  The  next  gale  that  sweeps  from  the 
north  will  bring  to  our  ears  the  clash  of  re- 
sounding arms.  Our  brethren  are  already 
in  the  field.  Why  stand  we  here  idle? 
What  is  it  that  gentlemen  wish  ?  What 
would  they  have  ?  Is  life  so  dear,  or  peace 
so  sweet,  as  to  be  purchased  at  the  price  of 
chains  and  slavery?  Forbid  it,  Almighty 
God  I  I  know  not  what  course  others  may 
take  ;  but  as  for  me,  give  me  liberty  or  give 
me  death." 

It  is  the  same  note,  the  note  of  liberty, 
struck  by  Patrick  Henry  in  America  and  by 
the  Earl  of  Chatham  in  Britain.  It  is  the 
same  passion,  the  passion  for  human  free- 
dom, stirring  in  the  hot  blood  of  the  young 
Virginian,  and  in  the  uncooled  blood  of  the 
Englishman  tottering  to  his  grave:  the  in- 
extinguishable passion  for  human  rights  and 
liberties  which  throbs  to-day  in  the  hearts  of 
the  Canadian  people,  and  which,  for  all 
these  months,  has  been  sending  North  Amer- 
ica's youngest  nation  across  the  Atlantic, 
carrying  the   North    American   idea  to  the 


IN   THE  AMERICAN   REPUBLIC  I05 

bloody  frontiers  of  France  and  Belgium,  in 
defense  of  all  the  little  peoples  everywhere 
who  must  be  free  or  die. 

The  ideas  of  freedom  and  self-government 
once  let  loose  in  the  minds  of  men,  the  peace 
of  autocrats  and  dictators  is  gone  forever. 

Confusion  in  the  Colonies 

The  conflict  in  Britain  was  in  part  the 
cause,  and  in  part  the  consequence  of  con- 
fusion in  the  Colonies.  Had  there  been 
no  George  III,  dull-witted  but  masterful, 
there  would  have  been  no  George  Wash- 
ington, clear-eyed  and  resolute.  Had  there 
been  no  George  III,  the  British  people 
would  never  have  been  betrayed  into  so  fool- 
ish and  fratricidal  a  war.  And  had  there 
been  no  George  Washington  the  confusions 
in  America,  and  the  jealousies  and  strife 
among  the  Colonies,  would  have  made  the 
War  of  the  Revolution  a  miscarriage  of  the 
struggle  for  freedom.  Looking  back  over 
those  days  of  misunderstaSnding,  ignorance 
and  folly,  in  Britain  and  in  America,  the  con- 
fidence of  the  American  patriot  of  the  time  is 


Io6         THE  NORTH   AMERICAN   IDEA 

justified :  "  We  shall  not  fight  our  battles 
alone.  There  is  a  Divinity  that  shapes  our 
ends."  Had  there  not  been,  above  all  the 
clamour  of  the  hour,  and  working  through 
the  stupidities  of  politics  and  the  misreadings 
of  events,  a  Power  that  is  not  man's  power, 
the  cause  of  liberty  itself  would  have  been 
wrecked  at  the  hands  of  the  very  men  who 
thought  themselves  the  only  upholders  the 
idea  of  freedom  had  in  all  the  world. 

Each  one  of  the  Colonies,  according  to  its 
political  temper,  and  the  local  interests  of  its 
people,  had  its  own  confusion  of  thought  and 
purpose.  Inasmuch  as  the  real  cause  of  the 
Revolution  was  a  restless  idea,  vague  and 
ill-defined,  in  the  minds  of  the  people,  there 
was  no  cut  and  dried  plan,  no  definite  and 
conspicuous  objective.  There  were  every- 
where ignorance  and  selfishness  and  prej- 
udice enough  to  wreck  any  ordered  program, 
as  students  of  history  now  see  quite  clearly. 
But  the  Revolution  was  not  ordered.  It  was 
born.  It  grew.  The  people  went  out  not 
knowing  whither  they  went.  They  saw  the 
Gleam,    and    stumblingly    they    followed    it. 


IN  THE  AMERICAN   REPUBLIC  107 

A  purpose  was  at  work  in  what  seemed 
nothing  but  chaos.  In  very  truth  a  Divinity- 
shaped  their  ends.  By  ways  that  they  knew 
not  they  were  led,  and,  led  by  a  hand  from 
out  the  dark,  their  feet  were  guided  into  the 
larger  freedom  and  the  clearer  light. 

In  this  great  university  of  the  South,  and 
here,  in  what  was  then  part  of  the  Colony  of 
the  Carolinas,  and  in  these  very  days  when 
the  call  to  service  with  the  democracies  of 
Britain  and  France  against  the  modern 
enemies  of  the  peace  of  the  world  is  empty- 
ing your  classrooms  of  students,  and  filling 
your  campus  with  the  khaki-clad  lads  being 
enlisted  and  drilled  for  the  battle-fields  of 
Europe — in  these  first  days  of  this  Republic's 
preliminary  experiences  in  this  the  World 
War,  we  can  imagine  more  clearly  the  con- 
fusions which  staggered  the  Colonies,  a  hun- 
dred and  fifty  years  ago,  when  the  call  was 
to  take  sides  for  or  against  their  lawful  King. 

In  some  of  the  Colonies,  in  Virginia  for 
instance,  the  pioneer  settlers  for  the  most 
part  came  from  England.  English  place- 
names  are  preserved  to  this  day,  indicating 


Io8         THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  IDEA 

the  shire  and  the  parish  from  which  the 
colonists  came,  and  distinctly  English  ways 
and  customs  survived  long-  after  England's 
political  authority  was  renounced.  The 
Washington  family  was  of  uncorrupted  Eng- 
lish blood  before  it  was  of  proud  Virginian 
birth,  and  it  honoured  the  Stars  and  Stripes, 
as  its  Washington  family  crest,  generations 
before  that  emblem  gave  national  significance 
to  the  American  flag.  George  Washington 
himself  bore  through  life  the  distinctive 
marks  of  a  well-born  English  country  gentle- 
man. 

Elsewhere  in  the  Colonies  the  ancestry  of 
the  Revolution  was  of  more  mixed  blood 
than  in  Virginia.  The  sojourn  of  many 
English  colonists  in  the  Netherlands  on  their 
way  to  America  brought  a  touch  of  life,  an 
original  Anglo-Saxon  bias,  from  the  low- 
lands of  Holland,  where  the  original  Anglo- 
Saxon  idea  of  representative  government  had 
kept  its  life  untainted  by  Roman  military 
absolutism,  long  after  other  communities  in 
the  Germanic  world  had  lost,  not  only  their 
freedom,  but  also  their  desire  to  be  free. 


IN  THE  AMERICAN   REPUBLIC  109 

Every  colony  in  America,  before  the 
Revolution,  had  received  a  dash  of  the  blood 
of  the  roving  and  irrepressible  Scot,  and,  in 
not  a  few  of  the  States  of  this  Republic,  the 
Scottish  blood  that  came  round  by  way  of 
the  North  of  Ireland  colours  the  life  of 
American  people,  fixes  the  quality  of  their 
minds,  and  gives  strength  and  definiteness 
to  the  accent,  alike  of  their  theology  and  of 
their  politics,  to  this  day. 

The  Strain  of  the  Celt 

But  one  great  section  of  the  American 
Republic  here  in  the  South,  and  stretching 
from  the  mountains  of  Tennessee  to  the  sea- 
board, with  North  Carolina  as  its  centre,  is 
unique  in  this :  here  in  this  district,  more 
than  in  any  other,  the  Celts,  not  the  Saxons, 
found  their  American  homes  in  the  Colonies 
before  the  Revolution.  Settlers  from  the 
Highlands  and  the  Islands  of  Scotland  came 
to  other  Colonies,  and  deposits  of  Celtic  life 
are  to  be  found  in  every  State.  But  to 
North  Carolina  the  Scottish  Celts  came  by 
the  thousands  in  the  hard  days  that  followed 


no         THE   NORTH   AMERICAN   IDEA 

the  last  Rising  of  the  clansmen  for  the 
Stuarts,  and  their  defeat,  under  Prince 
Charles  Edward,  on  Culloden  Moor,  in  1746. 
Those  Scottish  Highlanders  brought  with 
them  to  America,  and  preserved  for  their 
children  in  the  new  world,  the  Gaelic  lan- 
guage and  the  traditions  of  Celtic  life,  its 
blood-virtues  and  its  romantic  loyalties,  and 
they  poured  into  the  veins  of  America,  into 
its  religious,  educational  and  political  think- 
ing, something  of  the  characteristic  qualities 
of  the  Celts  of  history. 

A  half  dozen  years  ago  the  fact  that,  in 
the  Cape  Fear  River  district  of  North 
Carolina,  is  to-day  a  great  setdement  of 
people  dominating  the  life  of  more  than  a 
dozen  counties,  and  spreading  over  into  all 
the  surrounding  States,  and  proud,  with  all 
the  pride  of  the  Celt,  to  trace  their  an- 
cestral line  back,  through  the  confusions  of 
the  Revolutionary  War,  to  the  Scottish  High- 
lands,— even  a  half  dozen  years  ago  that  fact 
was  almost  wholly  unknown  in  Canada,  even 
in  the  historic  Scottish  districts  of  Nova 
Scotia   and   Ontario.     And  in  the  States  of 


IN   THE  AMERICAN   REPUBLIC  III 

the  North,  cut  ofl  by  the  merciless  sword  of 
the  Civil  War,  that  Celtic  element  in  Ameri- 
can life  was  not  only  not  recognized,  but  its 
significance  in  the  life  of  the  Republic  was 
unknown,  and  its  meaning,  as  a  factor  in  the 
growth  of  the  North  American  idea,  was  not 
understood. 

But  since  coming  to  Nashville  four  days 
ago,  and  here  in  the  academic  groves  of 
Vanderbilt,  have  I  met  the  clan  names  and 
the  clan  legacies  that  go  back  to  North  Caro- 
lina, and  then  far  back,  through  more  than  a 
half  dozen  generations,  to  some  strath  or 
glen  or  mountain  loch  of  Scotland,  where  the 
heather  still  purples  the  hills,  and  where  the 
note  of  the  laverock  lilts  wildly,  sweet  and 
long,  as  in  the  tragic  days  that  shadowed 
•*  The  Forty-five." 

This  is  not  the  place,  nor  is  this  Cole  Lec- 
tureship the  occasion,  for  a  consideration  of 
the  Celtic  element  in  the  history  of  the  Amer- 
ican people.  Such  a  discussion  would  re- 
quire a  close  scrutiny  of  the  dominant  fac- 
tors, not  only  in  this  Republic,  but  also  in 
Canada.     It  would  take  us  back  directly  to 


112         THE  NORTH   AMERICAN   IDEA 

Scotland  and  to  Ireland  and  to  Wales.  And, 
if  -we  penetrated  below  the  surface  and  ana- 
lyzed the  constituent  qualities  in  early  Eng- 
lish life,  we  might  find  that  the  idea  of  free- 
dom in  England  itself  owes  much — very 
much  more  than  the  ordinary  student  of 
British  history  has  ever  dreamed — to  the 
survivals  of  the  original  Celtic  life  which 
dominated  ancient  Britannia,  and  which  had 
crossed  Europe  from  out  the  mystery-land  of 
the  Near  East  beyond  the  Dardanelles,  be- 
fore the  Greeks  marched  over  "  the  ringing 
plains  of  windy  Troy,"  centuries  before  the 
Anglo-Saxon  was  born  into  the  history  of 
the  world. 

"  Liberty  Point " 

But  our  concern  at  this  moment  is  not  with 
these  speculations  of  racial  differences,  or 
with  the  contributions  to  political  theory, 
made  by  the  Celtic  imaginative  insight  into 
the  varieties  of  national  instinct  and  feeling, 
or  yet  with  the  Celts'  sympathetic  under- 
standing of  national  aspiration — a  spiritual 
quality  quite  outside  the  range  of  the  un- 


IN   THE  AMERICAN   REPUBLIC  H3 

aided  Anglo-Saxon  mind,  as  the  persistent 
misunderstandings  of  English  and  Irish 
through  centuries  of  history  so  tragically  il- 
lustrate. With  none  of  these  fascinating 
problems  have  we  to  do.  But  it  would  be 
impossible  as  it  would  be  highly  improper, 
and,  in  the  thick  of  the  conflict  of  world 
ideas,  it  would  not  be  fitting  for  a  Canadian 
of  unmixed  Celtic  blood,  with  a  touch  of  the 
Tar  Heel  in  his  lineage,  to  turn  away  from 
North  Carolina's  special  and  peculiar  part  in 
the  Colonial  struggle  for  national  self-gov- 
ernment in  the  American  Republic.  And  it 
would  be  mere  blindness  to  shut  one's  eyes 
to  the  side-light  which  the  South's  Celdc 
gleam  throws  on  the  growth  of  this  North 
American  idea. 

Here  in  the  South  you  cherish  your  Meck- 
lenburg Declaration,  and  you  do  not  feel  con- 
strained to  take  off  your  hat  to  Philadelphia, 
or  to  stand  in  special  awe  before  Independ- 
ence Hall,  as  the  only  place  made  sacred  to 
American  liberty  by  deeds  of  devotion  to  the 
American  Republic.  In  North  Carolina,  up 
the   Cape   Fear   River,  at  Fayetteville,  you 


114         THE   NORTH   AMERICAN   IDEA 

have  to-day  your  "  Liberty  Point,"  named 
and  known  because  there  the  North  Amer- 
ican idea  of  Hberty  and  self-government  was 
spoken  out  loud  by  Scottish  patriots  in  the 
Gaelic  language,  without  any  knowledge  of 
the  plans  or  purposes  of  the  patriots  of  Bos- 
ton and  Massachusetts  Bay,  more  than  a 
year  before  the  Independence  Convention  set 
free  their  immortal  idea  in  the  mind  of  the 
world. 

And  there,  too,  at  that  same  historic  "  Lib- 
erty Point,"  on  February  i8,  1776,  Scottish 
Highlanders  from  far  and  near,  thrilled  to 
the  impassioned  words,  in  their  own  Gaelic 
speech,  spoken  home  to  their  hearts  by  the 
truest  heroine  in  all  Scottish  history,  the 
deathless  Flora  Macdonald  of  noble  charac- 
ter and  stainless  memory,  who  lived  and 
served  in  North  Carolina  through  the  first 
five  troublous  years  of  the  American  Revo- 
lution. She,  who  in  Scotland,  over  thirty 
years  before,  suffered  the  loss  of  all  things  in 
loyal  devotion  to  the  House  of  Stuart,  in 
America  suffered  persecution  and  humilia- 
tion  worse  than  loss,  in  loyalty  to  her  oath 


IN   THE   AMERICAN   REPUBLIC  II5 

of  allegiance  to  her  lawful  King-  and  his 
threatened  cause  of  the  House  of  Hanover. 
And  on  that  same  day,  from  that  place  of 
tryst  at  "Liberty  Point,"  the  Royal  High- 
land Regiment,  nearly  three  thousand  strong, 
many  of  whom  had  carried  the  broadsword 
of  "  Bonnie  Charlie "  at  Culloden,  marched 
out  in  America  in  answer  to  the  call  of  their 
ancient  Saxon  enemy,  George  III,  and  his 
alien  Teuton  dynasty  from  Hanover. 

That  half-forgotten  story  of  the  Celts  in 
America,  and  of  their  queenly  heroine,  Flora 
Macdonald,  her  husband  and  family,  and  of 
all  their  devotion  to  misguided  leaders  and  a 
lost  cause,  which  her  name  and  her  fame  kept 
green  in  the  heart  of  the  world,  is  part  of  the 
history — part  of  the  romance — of  the  Revolu- 
tionary War. 

The  Motive  of  the  Scots 

But  more  important  than  the  story  itself, 
more  suggestive  of  the  confusion  of  the  time, 
and  more  significant  for  the  North  American 
idea  in  the  American  Republic,  is  the  motive 
which  held  to  their  old  solemn  loyal  duty,  as 


Il6         THE  NORTH   AMERICAN   IDEA 

they  saw  it,  those  Scottish  Celts  who  loved 
George  III  in  America  not  one  atom  more 
than  they  loved  him  thirty  years  before  in 
Scotland,  and  in  whose  Celtic  hearts  the 
ancient  fires  of  national  freedom,  despite 
their  pledged  service  to  Hanover,  burned  to 
the  whitest  glow. 

Why  did  they  risk  all  for  Hanover  in 
America  who  lost  all  for  Stuart  in  Scotland  ? 

Even  at  this  late  date  that  question  is  well 
worth  asking.  The  world  emotions  into 
which  America  is  again  drawn,  the  world 
problems  which  are  now  up  for  solution,  and 
the  world  issues  at  stake  in  this  war  of  all 
the  nations,  all  combine  to  give  a  peculiar 
interest  to  the  confusion  of  national  senti- 
ments and  the  conflicts  of  national  aspira- 
tions which  surrounded  this  American  Re- 
public when,  a  century  and  a  half  ago,  it 
entered  the  circle  of  self-governing  nations 
as  a  democracy  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  type. 

Quite  frankly  those  Scottish  Celts  who 
fought  on  the  Loyalist  side  in  the  American 
Revolution  were  not  impelled  in  their  serv- 
ice  and  sacrifice  by  any  love  they  had  for 


IN  THE  AMERICAN   REPUBLIC  II7 

the    English-born    but    Teuton-bred    King, 
George   III.     He   could  perhaps  speak  the 
English  language  after  a  fashion,  and  in  this 
one  point  he  excelled  his  predecessors  on  the 
British  throne,  George  I  and  George  II :  but, 
in  his  ideals  of  government  and  in  his  notions 
of  Royal   Prerogative,  George  III   was  not 
British  but  Teuton.     He  cherished  the  auto- 
cratic ideas  common  to  the  European  mon- 
archs  of  his  time,  and,  acting  on  the  assump- 
tion that,  having  been  born  in  England,  he 
must  be  a  real  English  King,  he  gathered 
about  him  in  his  Council  such  men  as  ac- 
cepted   his    assumption    and    favoured    his 
autocratic  program.     It   was  the  last  stand 
of  the  sovereign  King  against  the  sovereign 
People.     The   idea   of   popular   government 
had  already  disturbed  the  British  mind.    The 
conflict  came  to  a  head  in  those  stormy  days 
of   George   III,   and,   before   the  nineteenth 
century    was    three    decades    through,    the 
authority  of  the  People  was  acknowledged 
as    supreme,    and    the   direct   and   constant 
responsibility    of    the    Government    to    the 
People's  elected  representative  in  Parliament 


Il8         THE  NORTH   AMERICAN   IDEA 

became  a  foundation-stone  in  the  British  sys- 
tem :  the  days  of  autocracy  on  the  throne  of 
British  peoples  everywhere  were  numbered. 

But  before  the  nerve  of  crowned  autocracy 
in  Britain  was  drawn,  the  Revolution  seemed 
the  only  alternative.  Here  on  this  continent 
the  conflict  raged,  and  raged  with  all  the 
excesses  of  feeling  and  of  speech  which  rev- 
olution always  brings.  The  supreme  end 
in  view,  for  the  Patriots,  was  right  and 
patriotic,  and  was  wholly  inevitable  if  a  free 
people  must  enjoy  the  right  to  govern  them- 
selves. But,  all  extravagances  of  political 
speech  aside,  the  choice,  for  both  Patriots 
and  Loyalists,  was  hard  to  make.  They  all 
wanted  to  be  free  in  their  self-government, 
but,  even  for  the  foremost  of  the  Patriots, 
who  loved  "  the  flag  of  a  thousand  years  "  as 
truly  as  did  the  Loyalists,  the  wrench  away 
from  their  old  traditions  was  hard  to  make. 

But  for  the  Scottish  people  here  in  the 
Colonies  the  situation  was  doubly  trying. 
For  the  Scots  who  fought  on  the  Stuart  side 
in  Scotland  the  choice  involved,  not  loyalty 
to  the  person   of  the  King,  or  thought  for 


IN   THE  AMERICAN   REPUBLIC  II9 

their  own  interests  of  property  or  of  freedom, 
but  rather — and  this  is  the  permanently  de- 
termining element — personal  regard  for  the 
abiding  sacredness  and  authority  of  a  pledged 
oath  of  allegiance.  The  oath,  the  hated  oath 
compelled  by  their  forever  hated  enemy,  the 
Duke  of  Cumberland,  they  had  signed  after 
Culloden.  For  them  and  for  their  descend- 
ants to  this  day,  that  oath  was  the  bitterest 
humiliation.  But  they  took  it  in  Scotlandj 
and,  in  America,  thirty  years  after,  they  kept 
it.  With  the  uncharted  leagues  of  the  At- 
lantic rolling  between,  and  in  spite  of  all  the 
plausible  sophistries  which  might  satisfy 
easier  scruples  of  conscience,  that  hard  and 
hateful  oath  held.  It  held  even  though  all 
their  personal  sympathies  and  all  their  racial 
traditions  and  national  aspirations  might 
easily  have  yielded.  They  swore  to  their 
own  hurt  in  Scotland  and  in  America  they 
changed  not. 

The  Moral  Reaction 

That  was  a  hundred  and  forty  years  ago. 
The    geography    of    the    world's   map   has 


I20         THE  NORTH   AMERICAN   IDEA 

changed  since  then,  and  changed,  too,  are 
the  poUtical  attractions  and  repulsions  of  the 
peoples  of  the  world.  Since  then  the  little 
one  of  Colonial  days  in  America  has  become 
a  thousand,  and,  in  the  far  flashings  of  Eu- 
rope's war,  the  military  achievements  of  the 
Revolution  in  America  shrink  to  the  size  of 
incidents  in  a  skirmish.  In  the  perspective 
of  the  centuries  the  Revolution  is  seen  to  be 
great,  not  as  a  thing,  but  only  as  an  idea. 
But  the  moral  law  has  not  changed.  Moral 
differences  have  not  been  erased.  Moral 
obligations  have  not  lost  their  authority. 

Nowhere  in  North  America  to-day,  no- 
where within  the  sweep  of  the  North  Amer- 
ican idea,  is  loyalty  to  a  pledged  word  of 
honour  regarded  as  disloyalty  to  any  worthy 
cause.  The  moral  reaction  of  the  American 
people  in  these  last  days  has  carried  this 
American  Republic  to  the  utmost  extreme  of 
national  revolt  against  the  immoral  notion  of 
the  German  Empire, — that,  in  the  interna- 
tional sphere,  the  most  solemn  treaty  be- 
tween nations  becomes,  when  the  selfish  in- 
terests of  the  State  seem  to  require  it,  no 


IN  THE  AMERICAN   REPUBLIC  121 

more  sacred  or  more  obligatory  than  a  wind- 
tossed  "  scrap  of  paper." 

How  deep  tliat  moral  reaction  is,  how  real, 
and  how  significant,  even  when  it  touches 
the  treasured  traditions  of  the  Revolutionary- 
War  itself,  is  illustrated  for  me  in  two  per- 
sonal experiences  of  the  past  twelvemonth, 
one  in  the  South,  the  other  in  the  North,  and 
both  while  the  United  States  was  still,  in 
name  at  least,  neutral  in  its  attitude  to  Brit- 
ain and  to  Germany. 

For  some  twenty  years  past  there  has  been 
in  the  very  heart  of  that  Highland  Scottish 
district  of  North  Carolina,  at  Red  Springs, 
in  Cumberland  County,  a  college  for  the 
education  of  young  women.  On  the  occa- 
sion of  my  first  visit  to  the  State  I  was  taken 
to  see  that  college,  and  I  found  that,  of  more 
than  two  hundred  students  in  residence, 
eighty-three  per  cent,  were  of  Scottish  name 
and  ancestry.  They  came  to  college  from  a 
half  dozen  neighbouring  States,  but  in  the 
far  past,  in  the  pioneer  years  before  the 
Revolution,  their  forefathers  came  from  the 
Highlands    of    Scotland.     Cut    ofT    by    the 


122  THE   NORTH   AMERICAN   IDEA 

Revolution  in  the  eighteentli  century  from 
their  Scottish  heritage  beyond  the  Atlantic, 
and  by  a  still  deeper  chasm  cut  off  from  life 
in  the  States  of  the  North  by  the  Civil  War 
in    the   nineteenth    century,    they   cherished 
with   intensest  devotion,   in  their  home  life 
and  in  their  college  institutions,  the  heritages 
of  sentiment  and  of  blood-relationship  which, 
the  world  over  and  in  all  the  generations, 
make  up  so  much  of  life  for  the  spirit  of  the 
Celt.     And  last  year,  under  leadership  that 
was,  in  its  origins,   pardy   Scottish   Presby- 
terian  and    partly    French    Huguenot,    that 
college,   with    its    worthy   academic   history, 
was  incorporated  by  the  Legislature  of  North 
Carolina  as  "The  Flora  Macdonald  College," 
and,  under  the  patronage  of  His  Honour  the 
Governor  of  the  State,  it  was  re-dedicated,  on 
the  birthday  of  Queen  Victoria,  to  the  mem- 
ory of  Scotland's  most-loved  heroine. 

Time's  Revenges 

And  so  the  wheels  of  time  bring  round 
its  own  revenges.  There  in  Cumberland 
County,  the  county  that,  into  the  history  of 


IN   THE  AMERICAN   REPUBLIC  1 23 

the  State,  carried,  in  Saxon  spite,  the  very- 
name  of  the  bitterest  old-time  enemy  of  the 
Scottish  Celts,  the  name  of  Flora  Macdonald, 
in  all  the  days  to  come,  shall  be  preserved  in 
most  honourable  association,  with  the  worthy 
hope  that  her  spirit  of  unselfish  devotion  will 
be  perpetuated  by  the  lives  of  educated 
womanhood  far  and  wide  through  the  homes 
and  the  schools  of  the  Republic.  The  spirit 
of  that  name  shall  glorify  loyalty  to  duty  as 
a  priceless  element  in  the  life  of  both  the 
individual  and  the  nation :  and  it  shall  give 
immortality,  in  the  minds  of  American  peo- 
ple, to  the  noble  sense  of  reverence  for  treaty 
obligations,  which,  in  the  reactions  of  national 
standards  that  follow  this  world  war,  must 
give  world-power  and  the  right  to  leadership 
to  the  North  American  idea  in  the  American 
Republic. 

But  more  meaningful  than  the  romantic 
story  of  Flora  Macdonald,  and  even  more 
significant  of  the  changed  interpretations  of 
the  history  of  the  Revolution,  is  the  other 
incident  of  the  past  year,  which  comes  to 
mind  here   in   the   historic   South.     It  hap- 


124         THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  IDEA 

pened  in  Chicago,  one  hundred  and  thirty- 
five  years  after  the  surrender  of  Lord  Corn- 
walHs  at  Yorktown,  in  the  ancient  English 
Dominion  of  Virginia. 

I  was  on  that  occasion  the  chief  speaker 
at  a  great  celebration,  by  the  Sons  of  the 
American  Revolution,  of  the  surrender  of 
Cornwallis  on  October  19,  1781.  Some  of 
the  paragraphs  I  then  spoke  to  that  most 
loyal  American  audience  may  not  be  out  of 
place  here  in  the  South,  or  out  of  time  now 
when  the  whole  American  nation  is  being 
conscripted  for  service,  in  America  and  in 
Europe,  with  the  Canadians  and  the  British, 
for  the  maintenance  throughout  the  world  of 
the  very  institutions  of  democracy  and  self- 
government  for  which  General  Washington 
fought  so  bravely  in  the  War  of  the  Revolu- 
tion. These  are  words  I  spoke  to  the  Illinois 
Society  of  the  Sons  of  the  American  Revolu- 
tion last  year : 

"  This  occasion  is  significant  at  least  in 
this  :  for  the  first  time  in  your  history  you 
have  chosen  as  your  commemoration  speaker 
a  British  subject.     It  would  seem  as  though 


IN   THE   AMERICAN   REPUBLIC  I25 

the  division  of  the  English-speaking  world, 
which  scored  and  scarred  the  eighteenth 
century,  does  not,  in  this  twentieth  century, 
divide  the  English-speaking  peoples.  And 
it  seems,  too,  that  the  estrangement  of  the 
American  Colonies  from  Britain,  and  their 
separation  from  what  history  must  forever 
call  their  *  Mother  Country,'  was  not  an 
estrangement  or  a  separation  that  cut  down 
to  the  roots  of  the  things  that  are  deepest, 
most  real  and  most  permanent  on  either  side. 
The  flags  were  divided,  but  both  remained, 
and  still  remain,  '  Red,  White  and  Blue.' 
The  forms  of  government  were  changed,  but 
never  once,  in  America  or  in  Britain,  has 
there  been  persistent  disloyalty  to  those 
Anglo-Saxon  principles  of  civil  liberty,  which, 
as  the  common  heritage  of  both,  run  back 
through  our  common  history  of  more  than 
fifteen  hundred  years.  The  century  that  in- 
tervenes between  this  day  and  the  days  of 
Cornwallis  and  Washington  had  its  mis- 
understandings and  its  strife  in  the  English- 
speaking  world,  but,  for  more  than  one  hun- 
dred   years,    there    has    been    no    English- 


126         THE  NORTH   AMERICAN   IDEA 

speaking  war.  For  us,  as  for  you,  time  has 
made  the  bounds  of  freedom  wider  yet.  For 
you,  as  for  us,  humanity  to-day  calls  loud 
and  louder  still  for  those  defenses  of  freedom, 
those  institutions  of  justice  and  those  ideals 
of  citizenship  which  are  our  common  inherit- 
ances, and  which  it  is  our  national  duty  and 
our  glorious  privilege  to  make  secure  for  all 
the  world. 

The  Significance  of  the  Past 

"  And  this  is  the  abiding  significance,  the 
world  significance,  of  what  is  happening  here 
in  this  Cornwallis  Surrender  commemoration 
to-night.  You  who  glory  in  your  name  as 
'  Sons  of  the  American  Revolution '  give 
warm  and  liberal  welcome  to  a  British  sub- 
ject, and  you  call  him  to  speak  your  com- 
memoration word  on  this  meaningful  occa- 
sion :  and  why  ?  It  is  because  for  you,  true 
Americans,  as  for  all  true  men  in  Britain  and 
all  true  men  in  France,  the  world  has  come 
to  that  new  time,  that  momentous  time,  when 
the  revolutions  of  the  past  are  significant 
only  as  they  signify  in  the  present  the  larger 


IN   THE   AMERICAN   REPUBLIC  I27 

human  freedom,  when  the  achievements  of 
the  past  are  worth  remembering  only  as  they 
give  new  impulse  to  something  worthier  in  the 
present,  and  when  loyalty  to  the  past  is  noble 
only  when  it  means,  and  is  made  to  mean, 
unfaltering  devotion  to  those  principles  and 
those  ideals  which  make  past  and  present  a 
fitting  call,  a  compelling  prelude,  to  a  greater 
future,  with  its  better  freedom,  its  truer  jus- 
tice, and  its  nobler  peace,  for  all  peoples  over 
all  the  world. 

"  But  this  occasion  has  significance  even 
stranger  if  more  personal.  You  proud  Sons 
of  the  American  Revolution,  in  calling  to  be 
your  commemoration  speaker  a  British  sub- 
ject, have  called  one  who  is  also  not  only 
a  native-born  Canadian,  and  whose  fa- 
ther and  whose  grandfather  were  born  in 
Canada,  but  whose  claim  to  be  one  of  the 
'  Sons  of  the  American  Revolution '  is  as 
direct  and  as  highly  prized  as  is  your 
own.  Forebears  of  my  blood  and  family 
name  marched  in  the  regiments  and  suffered 
the  sorrows  of  the  Revolutionary  War — but 
on  the  Loyalist  side. 


128         THE  NORTH   AMERICAN   IDEA 

"When  the  Royal  Highland  Regiment, 
three  thousand  strong,  marched  out  of  Fay- 
etteville,  North  Carolina,  on  February  i8, 
1776,  their  tartan  colours  flying,  their  bag- 
piges  playing  *  vvi'  an  unco  flare,'  the  air 
filled  with  the  battle-cries  of  their  clans, 
among  the  hundreds  of  Macdonald  clansmen 
was  one,  '  Iain  Mac  Ewan  Oig,'  who  on  that 
day  carried,  for  George  III  and  the  House 
of  Hanover,  the  same  broadsword  he  carried 
thirty  years  before,  on  the  fateful  field  of 
Culloden  Moor,  for  Prince  Charles  Edward 
and  the  House  of  Stuart.  That  man  was 
my  great-great-grandfather ;  and  with  him 
marched  and  fought  three  of  his  sons,  one 
of  them  a  young  corporal,  whose  name  I 
bear.  And  his  fourth  son  fought  under  Lord 
Cornwallis  and  marched  in  the  line  of  sur- 
render at  Yorktown. 

"  The  fortunes  of  the  war  brought  that 
whole  family  of  Macdonald  clansmen  to 
Nova  Scotia.  In  1783,  after  the  war  was 
over,  they  were  each  given  soldiers'  grants 
of  land  in  the  wide  valley  of  the  East  River, 
in  the  County  of  Pictou.     And  in  that  birth- 


IN   THE  AMERICAN   REPUBLIC  1 29 

place  of  many  Canadian  Celts,  on  one  of 
the  Macdonald  family  homesteads,  old  and 
gnarled,  but  living  still,  and  in  witness  of 
events  we  celebrate  here  to-night,  there 
grows  to  this  day  the  '  Cornwallis  Apple 
Tree.' 

"And  so  it  was  that  I  felt  qualified  and 
free  to  accept  the  coraial  invitation  to  be  the 
guest  of  the  Illinois  Society  of  the  Sons  of 
the  American  Revolution,  on  this  occasion 
that  commemorates  the  surrender  of  the 
sceptre  of  British  dominion  in  the  American 
colonies  to  General  Washington,  as  head  of 
the  American  forces.  For  I,  too,  represent 
the  loyal  blood  and  the  deathless  spirit  of 
that  revolutionary  war. 

"  But  you  will  ask  nie — you  have  a  right 
to  ask  me — how  it  came  that  men  like  those 
Scottish  Highlanders,  who  had  neither  Teu- 
ton blood  nor  Tory  sympathy,  men  who,  like 
their  descendants,  held  to  the  democratic 
doctrine  of  the  Presbyterians  and  to  the 
democratic  politics  of  the  Liberals,  who  in 
Scotland  had  been  Radicals  before  the  Revo- 
lution  and   in   Canada  for   six   generations 


I30         THE   NORTH   AMERICAN   IDEA 

have  continued  radicals  in  Church  and  State 
— how  came  it  that  for  that  brief  spasm  they 
stood  on  the  reactionary  side  and  fought 
against  the  organizing  idea  of  true  de- 
mocracy. That  question  deserves  an  honest 
answer,  but  to  it  no  adequate  answer  is  given 
in  any  of  the  histories,  either  American  or 
British. 

"  And  this  is  the  answer,  the  answer  true 
to  the  facts  of  the  situation  in  North  Caro- 
lina, and  true  also  to  the  blood  history  of 
the  Celts  in  America  and  in  Britain,  and 
through  more  than  two  thousand  years  since 
the  Celtic  tribes  broke  into  the  life  of  West- 
ern Europe.  Those  Scottish  Highlanders, 
who  rose  with  the  Stuarts  under  Prince 
Charlie  in  1745  and  were  defeated  at  Cul- 
loden,  were  compelled,  after  the  Stuart  cause 
was  lost,  to  take  the  oath  of  allegiance  to  the 
House  of  Hanover.  That  oath  was  the  ut- 
most limit  of  personal  humiliation  to  a  proud 
and  unconquered  race  of  people.  It  bound 
those  who  took  it  to  their  utmost  sacrifice  in 
defense  and  service  to  their  King  and  his 
cause. 


IN   THE   AMERICAN   REPUBLIC  I3I 

"  That  oath  held  in  Britain,  and  it  held  in 
America.  Their  interests  of  citizenship  as 
well  as  their  personal  sympathies  might 
have  been  with  the  Patriots.  But  there  was 
the  oath.  They  lost  everything — property, 
peace  and  the  advantages  of  citizenship  in 
the  United  States.     But  they  kept  their  oath. 

"  That  was  a  hundred  and  forty  years  ago 
when  my  ancestors  marched  out  under  the 
banner  of  Scotland  in  defense  of  the  Union 
Jack  of  Britain — marched  out  against  their 
own  Celtic  kith  and  kin,  who,  freed  from  the 
oath,  served  under  General  Washington. 
Your  ancestors  won  the  victory,  while  mine 
met  defeat.  But  to-day,  on  this  commemo- 
ration of  victory,  we  rejoice  together.  But 
we  do  not  forget,  no  true  American  wishes 
to  forget,  that  among  the  defeated  were 
those  who  fought  for  their  oath's  sake,  who 
sacrificed  for  their  word  of  honour,  and  who 
earned  that  day  the  acclaim  which,  in  this 
larger  and  clearer  light,  in  this  darker  and 
deadlier  shadow,  America  raises  to  those 
who  hold  to  the  sacredness  and  the  obliga- 
tion of  a  '  scrap  of  paper.'  " 


132         THE  NORTH   AMERICAN   IDEA 

There  was  indeed  confusion  in  the  Colonies 
a  hundred  and  forty  years  ago.  There  was 
confusion  among  the  Colonists  themselves. 
There  was  confusion  worse  confounded  be- 
tween the  Government  in  Britain  and  the 
free-minded  British  citizens  in  America. 
That  confusion  led  to  revolution.  But,  in 
its  turn,  the  revolution  in  the  minds  of  men 
on  both  sides  prepared  the  way  to  better 
understandings,  not  for  the  Anglo-American 
democracy  alone,  but  for  all  the  world. 

And  it  was  as  an  expression  of  the  com- 
plete understanding  which,  in  these  later 
days  of  democracy's  entente,  binds  together, 
in  this  world-war's  fierce  conflict,  the  whole 
British  Empire  and  the  whole  American  Re- 
public that,  as  part  of  last  year's  celebration 
of  the  Surrender  of  Cornwallis,  a  native-born 
Canadian  of  the  Loyalist  stock,  by  the  Illi- 
nois Society  of  the  Sons  of  the  American 
Revolution,  was  elected,  perhaps  for  the  first 
time  in  history,  "  an  honourary  member  of 
the  Sons  of  the  American  Revolution." 

Eye  to  eye  we  see  to-day.     To-morrow  at 
the  battle  front  shoulder  to  shou.lder  we  shall 


IN   THE  AMERICAN   REPUBLIC  133 

stand.  And  on  the  third  day,  the  great  and 
glorious  new  day,  the  day  of  the  world's  de- 
Hverance  from  hatreds  and  strifes,  we  shall 
stand  together,  all  we  of  the  Anglo-Saxon 
tradition,  of  the  British  inheritance,  and  of 
the  North  American  idea — stand  together, 
against  the  confusion  of  the  nations,  for  the 
harmonious  life-concert  of  humanity. 

The  Aftermath  of  Revolution 

Revolution  in  itself  is  lawlessness.  It  is 
open  and  violent  revolt  against  the  estab- 
lished order  of  things. 

At  the  time,  and  under  the  circumstances, 
revolution  may  justify  itself  to  men  who  love 
liberty  and  to  whom  despotic  conditions  of 
life  have  become  intolerable.  For  them  it 
may  seem  the  only  way  out  into  the  open, 
and,  if  successful,  their  lawless  revolution 
may  be  justified  by  their  law-abiding  chil- 
dren. So  it  seems  to  many  lovers  of  free- 
dom among  the  German  people  to-day: 
revolution  against  the  Kaiser  and  the  Hohen- 
zollern  dynasty,  had  they  but  power  to 
strike,   is    their   only   hope.     So   it   seemed 


134         THE  NORTH   A]MERICAN   IDEA 

yesterday  to  the  man  who,  in  Russia's  name, 
rose  against  the  Romanoffs  and  dethroned 
the  Czar.  And  so  was  it  with  Washington 
and  Jefferson  and  FrankHn  and  the  Fathers 
of  American  Independence,  who,  for  free- 
dom's sake,  made  the  North  American  idea 
express  itself  in  the  American  Republic. 

Because  of  the  reactionary  dogmas  at  that 
time  in  control  of  government  thinking  in 
Britain,  the  revolution  of  the  Colonies  in 
America  was  inevitable.  And  all  true 
Britons,  from  the  Prime  Minister  in  the  Brit- 
ish House  of  Commons,  to  the  most  loyal 
British  citizen  in  the  remotest  colony  of  the 
Empire,  join  with  the  Right  Hon.  Arthur 
Balfour,  the  loyal  Scot,  who,  as  head  of  the 
British  Mission  to  the  United  States,  in  this 
strange  new  time,  represents  in  Washington 
to-day  the  sentiments  of  the  Mother  Country 
to  the  Daughter  Republic,  and  who,  yester- 
day, at  Mount  Vernon  laid  the  chaplet  of  the 
Empire's  grateful  honour  at  the  tomb  of  one 
of  the  noblest  of  Anglo-Saxon  statesmen. 

But  inevitable  though  the  Revolution  was, 
it  also  was,  in  some  respects,  as  revolutions 


IN  THE  AMERICAN  REPUBLIC         I35 

always  are,  the  sowing  of  dragon's  teeth. 
The  aftermath  of  the  American  Revolution 
appeared  for  the  American  Republic  in  the 
century  that  followed  after.  Just  because  a 
revolution  is  an  explosion  of  pent-up  ideas, 
and  because  the  scattering  abroad  of  vital 
ideas,  in  a  lawless  explosion,  may  be  dan- 
gerous to  the  institutions  of  law  and  order, 
a  revolutionary  start  puts  a  heavy  strain  on 
a  new  Republic.  Democracy  requires  that  the 
people's  will  should  be  steady,  and  the  sense 
of  law's  authority  strong,  if  "the  common 
sense  of  most"  is  to  "keep  the  fretful  realm 
in  awe."  In  every  time  of  strife  and  war  in 
the  United  States,  some  of  the  turbulent 
ideas  of  the  first  Revolution  have  been  astir. 
The  habits  of  lawlessness,  which  through  the 
century  marked  pioneer  settlements  along 
the  receding  frontier  of  American  life,  are, 
by  some  students  of  the  problem,  referred 
back  to  the  disturbing  conditions  through 
which  the  colonial  adventurers  passed  on 
their  rough,  stage-coach  way  to  the  settled 
life  of  the  Republic.  A  bomb,  when  fired, 
may  be  destructive  of  things,  but  explosion 


136         THE  NORTH   AMERICAN   IDEA 

is  the  end  of  it.  But  a  vital  idea,  right  or 
wrong,  once  it  is  set  free,  lives  on  in  other 
personalities,  and  may  disturb  the  peace  of 
generations  yet  unborn. 

The  War  of  1812-14,  the  last  war  between 
peoples  of  the  English-speaking  world,  was 
part  of  the  aftermath  of  the  original  War  of 
the  Revolution.     How  far  off  that  last  war 
is,  and   how   very   long   ago,  was   brought 
home  to  me  on  a  motor  trip,  out  from  Nash- 
ville to  "  The  Hermitage,"  the  old  home  of 
General  Andrew  Jackson,  who  led  the  Amer- 
ican forces,  in  that  last  battle  at  New  Or- 
leans, months  after  peace  between  the  war- 
ring nations  had  been  declared.     The  relics 
in    the   museum,    and   the   coach    in    which 
Jackson    travelled    from    his    farm    home   in 
Tennessee  to  his  inauguration  as  President 
at  Washington,  are  not  more  out  of  date  to- 
day than  are  the  questions  supposed  to  be  at 
issue  in  that  controversy  of  more  than  a  hun- 
dred   years    ago   between    Britain   and   the 
United   States.     Under   the    shadow   of  the 
world's  black  and  desolating  war,  the  British 
Empire  and  the  American   Republic,   these 


IN  THE  AMERICAN   REPUBLIC  137 

two  nations  of  one  people,  with  one  back- 
ground, and  now  with  one  solemnizing 
world-responsibility,  stand  close  together, 
closer  far  than  at  any  time  in  all  their  past. 
The  heroes  of  each  are  honoured  by  both 
and  the  achievements  of  one  are  the  treas- 
ures of  the  other.  To  a  Canadian  to-day 
the  memorials  of  Andrew  Jackson  at  "  The 
Hermitage "  here  in  the  South,  like  the 
Perry  Centennial  Memorial  at  Put-in-Bay, 
on  the  shore  of  Lake  Erie  in  the  North,  are 
not  reminders  of  the  long-dead  follies  of  the 
century  that  is  gone,  but  are  pledges,  sacred 
pledges  sworn  in  blood  a  hundred  years  ago, 
of  our  common  allegiance  to  the  cause  of 
world-freedom,  and  of  our  newly-pledged 
Anglo-American  devotion  to  the  maimed 
and  lacerated  causes  of  the  world's  peace. 

Pan-Germanism  in  A7nerica 

The  North  American  idea  in  the  American 
Republic  has  had  to  face,  through  the  past 
dozen  years  or  more,  one  persistent  sys- 
tematic and  insidiously  threatening  menace. 
That  menace  to  the  right  of  a  free  people  to 


138         THE  NORTH  AMERICAN   IDEA 

govern  themselves  is  represented  to  the  man 
in  the  street  in  the  doctrines  of  Pan-Ger- 
manism. 

In  the  days  before  the  war  broke  up  the 
fixed  confines  of  men's  thinking,  the  term 
Pan-Germanism  awakened  only  academic 
interest  in  the  United  States.  The  German 
war-lords  and  their  noisy  undergraduate 
imitators  might  drink  to  "  Der  Tag "  in 
Berlin  on  every  convenient  occasion,  but 
that  habit  was  looked  upon  by  American 
students,  alike  in  Berlin  and  in  Boston,  as  a 
harmless  custom  befitting  young  men  in 
their  "  cups."  It  conveyed  no  serious  sig- 
nificance. Not  even  students  from  Britain, 
or  from  British  Dominions  overseas,  were 
disposed  to  feel  insulted  by  the  meaning 
with  which  the  planned  and  purposed  war 
has  since  crammed  the  Prussian  toast.  They 
did  not  believe,  they  could  not  believe,  that 
men  who  were  their  class-room  friends,  who 
sat  with  them  under  the  teachings  of  the 
master  minds  of  Germany's  foremost  univer- 
sities, could  cherish  the  barbarous  and  brutal 
ideas  of  a  world  war,  such  as  "  Der  Tag " 


IN  THE  AMERICAN   REPUBLIC  139 

suggested  to  the  German  militarists,  and  was 
made  to  suggest  to  the  great  body  of  Ger- 
man students.  And  if  German  students  did 
cherish  those  ideas  when  they  honoured  their 
customary  toast,  the  marvel  is  in  their 
colossal  dunderheadedness  in  making  such 
open  confession. 

And  when  at  last,  in  19 14,  The  Day  of 
which  they  sang  did  come,  and  when  with 
ruthless  plainness  it  was  revealed  that  the 
German  State  had  deliberately  planned  war 
on  a  colossal  and  destructive  scale,  first 
against  France  and  Russia,  and  then,  and 
most  determinedly,  against  Britain,  the  typ- 
ical Englishman  in  England  could  not  be- 
lieve his  ears  or  credit  his  eyes. 

In  the  early  months  of  the  war  the  news- 
papers and  magazines  in  Germany  w^ere 
reeking  with  intense  and  malignant  hatred 
of  Britain.  The  toast  of  the  years  of  pre- 
tended peace  was  translated  by  the  war- 
lords, the  mom.ent  the  war  was  called,  into 
the  most  diabolical  and  malevolent  curses  of 
Hate.  Men  in  England  who  thought  of  men 
in  Germany  as  their  own  Saxon  half-brothers 


I40        THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  IDEA 

were  disposed  almost  to  laugh  at  the  violence 
and  ungovernable  manifestations  of  the  spirit 
of  hatred  which  took  possession  of  many 
soldiers  in  the  German  army  and  of  many 
civilians  in  the  cities  of  Germany.  Even 
though  the  war  had  actually  begun,  Cana- 
dians were  as  slow  of  heart  to  believe  in  the 
fiendish  blood-lust  of  the  German  soldiers 
and  their  officers  as  were  the  British.  They 
all  smiled  an  almost  incredulous  smile  at  the 
seeming  extravagance  of  Ernest  Lissauer,  in 
his  poem,  so  widely  read  in  Germany  at  the 
time.  But  before  the  first  Christmas  of  the 
war  had  passed,  observant  Canadians  knew 
that  Lissauer's  lines  in  "  A  Chant  of  Hate 
Against  England,"  was  the  utterance  of  no 
mere  madness  at  work  in  the  poet's  brain, 
but  was  the  free  expression  of  a  national 
hatred,  ruthless  and  murderous,  but  true  to 
the  temper  and  the  spirit  of  the  Prussian 
mind.  Since  October,  1914,  the  world  has 
seen  too  much  ugly  evidence  of  what  the 
war-lords  of  Germany  really  meant,  to  try 
any  longer  to  explain  away  the  German 
poet's  Hymn  of  Hate  : 


IN  THE  AMERICAN   REPUBLIC  141 

"In  the  Captain's  Mess,  in  the  banquet  hall, 
Sat  feasting  the  officers,  one  and  all ; 
Like  a  sabre-blow,  like  the  swing  of  a  sail, 
One  seized  his  glass  held  high  to  hail ; 
Sharp-snapped  like  the  stroke  of  a  rudder's  play. 
Spoke  three  words  only  :    '  To  the  Day  ! ' 

"  Whose  glass  this  fate  ? 
They  had  all  but  a  single  bate. 
Who  was  thus  known  ? 
They  had  one  foe,  and  one  alone  — 
England  I 

**  Take  you  the  folk  of  the  Earth  in  pay. 
With  bars  of  gold  your  ramparts  lay. 
Bedeck  the  ocean  with  bow  on  bow. 
Ye  reckon  well,  but  not  well  enough  now. 
French  and  Russian  they  matter  not, 
A  blow  for  a  blow,  a  shot  for  a  shot, 
We  fight  the  battle  with  bronze  and  steel. 
And  the  time  that  is  coming  Peace  will  seal. 
You  will  we  hate  with  a  lasting  hate, 
We  will  never  forego  our  hate : 
Hate  by  water  and  hate  by  land. 
Hate  of  the  head  and  hate  of  the  hand. 
Hate  of  the  hammer  and  hate  of  the  crown, 
Hate  of  seventy  millions,  choking  down. 
We  love  as  one,  we  hate  as  one, 
We  have  one  foe,  and  one  alone  — 
England  I  " 

As   it   has   been    interpreted    in    the  after 
experiences  of   the  war,  in  its  cold-blooded 


142         THE   NORTH   AMERICAN    IDEA 

brutality  and  in  its  insane  war-lust,  the  pagan 
spirit  of  the  Prussian  soldiery,  when  they 
crossed  Belgium  and  rioted  in  France,  is 
now  known  to  be  of  a  piece  with  the  spirit 
of  the  Kaiserism.  And  that  spirit  is  in  tune 
with  what  they  meant  when,  in  their  serious 
discussions  in  university  class-rooms  and  in 
journals  of  culture  before  the  war,  they  pre- 
sented the  qualities  and  ideals  of  Pan-Ger- 
manism. 

Bernhardi^ s  Secret  Mission 

Within  the  past  year  or  two  a  great  deal 
of  light  has  been  thrown  on  the  Pan-German 
program  in  the  United  States,  and  the  public 
mind  is  much  more  sensitive  to  the  signif- 
icant facts  of  Germany's  intrigues  in  this 
Republic.  Since  coming  to  the  South  I  was 
not  a  litde  interested  to  learn  that,  even  to 
leaders  of  public  opinion  on  the  press  and  in 
public  office,  it  was  unknown  that  the  most 
notorious  officer  on  the  General  Staff  of  the 
German  Empire  was  a  secret  visitor  to  the 
American  Republic  in  1913.  that  he  spied 
out   the   land    from   San    Francisco  to  New 


IN   THE  AMERICAN   REPUBLIC  143 

York,  that  he  was  the  authorized  go-between 
from  the  war-lords  in  Berlin  to  the  German- 
Americans  in  the  United  States,  that  in  con- 
fidence he  warned  them  of  the  Plan  of  Cam- 
paign laid  down  by  the  German  General 
Staff  for  the  opening  and  the  prosecuting  of 
the  war,  this  world  war,  which,  he  told  them, 
the  year  before  it  broke,  was  both  certain 
and  imminent.  The  fact  of  that  secret  visit 
of  General  von  Bernhardi  to  the  United 
States,  the  program  of  it,  and  its  meaning 
in  the  light  of  subsequent  events,  were  told 
to  me  by  one  of  the  two  Americans  who 
knew  these  facts  at  first  hand  from  Bernhardi 
himself — Dr.  David  Starr  Jordan,  the  Chan- 
cellor of  Leland  Stanford  University,  Cali- 
fornia. 

It  was  in  September,  19 14,  that  I  met 
Dr.  Jordan  in  Boston.  He  had  just  ar- 
rived from  London,  on  his  return  trip  from 
Europe  and  the  Balkans,  after  an  absence 
from  the  United  States  of  a  year  and  four 
months.  There  in  the  office  of  the  World 
Peace  Foundation,  of  which  both  of  us  were 
directors,  he  told  the  story  of  his  meeting  in 


144         THE  NORTH   AMERICAN   IDEA 

May,  1913,  with  von  Bernhardi  in  the  Ger- 
man Consulate  in  San  Francisco,  at  a  private 
gathering  of  German-Americans  invited  by 
the  German  Consul.  Not  only  had  the  story 
never  been  published,  but  it  was  so  amazing 
and  so  significant  that  I  asked  him  to  write 
out  what  he  could  remember  of  Bernhardi's 
address,  that  I  might  publish  it  if  I  saw  fit. 
He  wrote  nearly  a  dozen  foolscap  pages. 
On  November  26,  1914,  I  published  in  The 
Globe  the  following  paragraphs  from  Chan- 
cellor Jordan's  manuscript : 

"  I  met  von  Bernhardi  in  San  Francisco 
and  heard  him  give  an  address  on  May  26, 
1 9 13,  just  as  I  was  leaving  for  Europe  on  a 
tour  of  Germany,  the  Balkans  and  Australia. 
The  invitation  was  from  the  German  Consul 
in  San  Francisco.  It  was  on  the  official 
paper  of  the  Consul's  office.  The  gathering 
was  composed  of  about  three  hundred  per- 
sons, all  Germans  except  one  other  American 
and  myself.  The  Consul  presided,  and  the 
meeting  was  semi-official,  but  private.  So 
far  as  I  know  there  was  no  reporter  present, 
and  no  report  was  published.     I  would  not 


IN   THE  AMERICAN    REPUBLIC  145 

have  known  that  the  German  cavalry  gen- 
eral was  in  America  except  for  this  meeting. 
He  went  to  Los  Angeles  for  a  similar  gather- 
ing, then  to  St.  Louis  and  eastern  centres  of 
German  population.  I  understood  he  came 
over  from  Japan. 

"  Bernhardi's  mission  was  to  Germans  in 
America.  His  very  evident  purpose  was  to 
neutralize  the  policy  of  good-will  among  the 
nationaUties  represented  in  our  population, 
to  counteract  the  work  for  international 
peace,  to  prepare  the  Germans  for  the  com- 
ing war,  which  he  said  was  both  inevitable 
and  near,  and  to  convince  them  that  Ger- 
many's idea  of  war  is  righteous,  and  that 
this  particular  war  was  thoroughly  well 
planned  and  would  be  carried  out  to 
the  greatness  and  glory  of  the  German 
Empire. 

"  Very  unmistakable  were  his  references  to 
the  planned  march  through  Belgium  and  the 
taking  of  Paris.  He  did  not  mince  matters. 
Questions  of  morals,  of  international  treaties, 
of  national  rights,  he  brushed  aside.  *  Law,' 
he  said,  *  is  a  makeshift ;  the  reality  is  force. 


146         THE   NORTH   AMERICAN   IDEA 

Law  is  for  weaklings  ;  force  is  for  strong  men 
and  strong  nations.' 

"  Perhaps  his  chief  purpose  was  to  advise 
Germans  in  the  United  States  that  Britain, 
not  France,  is  in  Germany's  way,  that  Britain 
would  soon  be  reached,  and  reached  by  Ger- 
many's war. 

"  Bernhardi's  address  was  a  little  more 
unreserved,  more  brutally  frank,  than  his 
book.  His  work  was  part  of  the  campaign 
to  organize  German  opinion  in  the  United 
States,  and  to  separate  it  from  American 
opinion.  That  campaign  was  begun  here 
fifteen  years  ago  by  Professor  Karl  Lamp- 
recht  of  Leipsig.  The  same  campaign  has 
been  carried  on  in  Brazil,  only  much  more 
openly.  Its  note  was  struck  by  General 
Keim  in  Germany,  who  preached  the  doc- 
trines of  Faith,  Hope  and  Hate.  Belgium 
was  to  be  invaded  for  the  purpose  of  secur- 
ing Antwerp  and  other  naval  bases  from 
which  to  strike  Britain. 

"  When  I  heard  Bernhardi  I  thought  his 
words  those  of  another  of  the  war-mad  mili- 
tarists.    When   1  was  in  Germany  last  Au- 


IN   THE  AMERICAN   REPUBLIC  I47 

gust,  and  saw  his  plan  of  campaign  adopted 
by  the  German  army,  I  knew  he  spoke  for 
the  General  Staff,  and  that  they  are  all  vic- 
tims of  the  same  madness." 

The  publication  of  that  statement  from 
Dr.  David  Starr  Jordan  was  the  occasion  of 
much  comment.  At  first  pro-Germans  denied 
the  authenticity  of  the  report.  Failing  in 
that,  they  repudiated  the  reliability  of  General 
von  Bernhardi,  and  his  right  to  speak  for  the 
authorities  in  Germany.  But  it  was  after- 
wards known  that  his  mission  had  the  ap- 
proval of  the  Imperial  authorities  at  Berlin, 
and  for  his  services  on  that  mission  he  was 
honoured  by  the  Kaiser,  and,  since  the  war 
began,  was  appointed  to  a  higher  and  more 
responsible  post. 

What  gave  von  Bernhardi's  world  tour 
and  his  statements  permanent  interest  is  the 
fact  that  he  was  not  only  authorized  by  the 
Imperial  authorities,  but  that  he  was  himself 
received,  and  his  plans  and  purposes  were 
promoted,  by  the  German  consuls  in  the 
United  States.  He  travelled  from  place  to 
place  without  any  publicity.     The  fact  of  his 


148         THE  NORTH  AMERICAN   IDEA 

visit  to  the  Pacific  coast  became  public  only 
through  Dr.  Jordan's  chance  account  of  it 
after  the  war,  which  he  foretold,  had  actually 
begun.  His  visit  to  the  German  Ambassa- 
dor was  never  made  public.  That  he  was 
in  Egypt  in  February,  1912,  and  subsequently 
in  Singapore  and  elsewhere  in  the  Orient, 
became  known  in  America  only  by  accident. 
Everywhere  secrecy  was  maintained.  Every- 
where the  German  mind  was  secretly  pre- 
pared for  the  coming  of  the  war.  On  a  later 
occasion  Dr.  Jordan  made  to  me  this  state- 
ment :  "  I  read  '  Germany  and  the  Next  War ' 
before  I  met  the  author.  I  said  then  that  if 
Germany  really  accepted  Bernhardi's  views, 
Europe  would  have  to  crush  it  out  like  a 
nest  of  snakes.  Germany  did  accept  those 
views,  and  now  there  can  be  no  peace  or 
safety  until  the  snakes,  and  the  whole  system 
that  produced  them,  are  utterly  crushed  out." 

Bcrnstorff^ s  Treason  to  Honour 

In  May,  191 7,  it  is  unnecessary  to  prove 
the  now  known  facts  of  Germany's  treason  to 
truth  and  honour  and  international  good-will. 


IN   THE  AMERICAN   REPUBLIC  I49 

The  disclosures  made  in  connection  with  the 
dismissal  from  the  Embassy  at  Washington 
of  Count  von  Bernstorfi  justify  the  very 
worst  suspicions  and  rumours  current  in  the 
United  States  and  Canada.  Indeed  not 
the  half  has  yet  been  told.  It  is  true,  as  an 
informed  American  has  stated,  that  there  is 
evidence  enough  to  have  hanged  the  dis- 
missed Ambassador,  six  times  over,  for  the 
murder  of  Americans  in  the  United  States, 
to  which  crimes  Count  von  BernstorfiE  and 
members  of  his  staff  were  parties.  Some  day 
that  evidence  will  be  given  to  the  public.  It 
involves  hundreds  of  Germans  in  the  United 
States.  It  deals  with  the  most  notorious 
crimes  committed  in  North  America  during 
the  past  three  years.  It  involves  every  one 
of  the  German  diplomats  and  statesmen,  who 
where  the  honoured  guests  of  the  Govern- 
ment and  people  of  the  United  States  at  the 
very  time  they  plotted  against  the  lives  of 
American  citizens. 

A  case  in  point  was  brought  to  my  atten- 
tion only  to-day.  I  cite  it  because  of  its 
interest  in  other  directions.     It  touches  not 


I50         THE  NORTH   AMERICAN   IDEA 

the  crimes  of  murder  and  arson  involved 
in  other  cases,  but  only  the  impudent  and 
brazen  dishonour  of  Count  von  Bernstorff  at 
the  very  time  when  he  was  the  proud  guest 
of  American  universities,  and  was  honoured 
by  them  with  their  very  highest  degree  of 
Doctor  of  Laws.  As  if  to  brand  the  culprit 
with  insolence  as  well  as  with  dishonour,  his 
ofTense  in  this  case  was  committed  as  orator 
before  the  American  Society  of  Political  and 
Social  Science,  when  he  presented  with  great 
and  circumspect  detail  an  oration  on  "  The 
Development  of  Germany  as  a  World 
Power,"  in  which  he  plagiarized  dozens  of 
whole  passages,  both  of  opinion  and  of 
argument,  from  William  H.  Dawson's  book 
"  The  Evolution  of  Modern  Germany."  In 
the  most  barefaced  manner,  Bernstorff  pre- 
sented extracts  and  opinions  as  his  own,  and 
was  party  to  their  publication  in  the  annals 
of  the  Academy,  and  to  the  "  copyright " 
notice  which  the  oration  carried.  A  more 
shameless  case  of  deliberate  plagiarism, 
and  under  circumstances  more  vulgarly  dis- 
honourable, cannot  be  found.     The  facts  of 


IN   THE  AMERICAN   REPUBLIC  I51 

it  were  published  in  the  issue  of  the  New 
York  Herald  for  December  25,  1914,  but,  as 
far  as  my  information  goes,  the  guilty  Am- 
bassador made  no  apology  and  expressed  no 
regret.  Mention  of  it  here  is  pertinent  be- 
cause gentlemen  of  Vanderbilt  University 
had  to  do  with  the  exposure  of  this  pla- 
giarism and  with  the  condemnation  of  the 
"Shyster" — to  quote  the  word  applied  to 
the  notorious  Count — who  scandalized  the 
ten  American  universities,  whose  honourable 
degree  he  so  basely  dishonoured. 

Not  many  weeks  before  the  war  broke  out, 
which  Germany  had  planned  against  the 
democracies  of  the  world,  I  was  guest  with 
Bernstorff  at  the  annual  banquet  of  the  New 
England  Society  of  Jewelers  and  Silver- 
smiths, in  Providence,  Rhode  Island.  His 
conduct  on  that  occasion,  as  I  now  very  well 
remember,  was  such  as  became  the  privi- 
leged "  Scoundrel  "  he  proved  himself  to  be. 
That  he  knew  of  the  coming  of  the  war,  and 
that,  as  Chancellor  Jordan  has  since  declared, 
"  Britain,  not  France  was  in  Germany's  way 
and  would  soon  be  reached  by   Germany's 


152         THE  NORTH   AMERICAN   IDEA 

war,"  and  that  Canada  was  involved  with 
Britain  in  tiie  German  Ambassador's  mind, 
was  made  memorably  plain  to  me  by  the 
personal  conduct  of  the  Count  himself.  Not 
even  the  studied  insolence  of  his  Prussian 
habit  would  explain  his  behaviour  to  me  as  a 
Canadian.  When  Germany  made  war  with 
Britain  inevitable,  four  months  later,  1  under- 
stood. And  it  is  a  distinct  satisfaction  now 
to  recall  that  then,  under  his  very  eyes,  the 
response  of  a  great  audience  of  represent- 
ative New  Englanders  made  it  very  unmis- 
takable that,  if  the  worst  came  to  the  worst 
in  international  relations,  the  United  States 
and  Canada  would  stand  together,  in  un- 
wavering defense  of  Anglo-American  democ- 
racy, against  all  comers  whether  on  the 
Atlantic  or  on  the  Pacific.  Count  von  Bern- 
storff  as  a  diplomat  was  true  to  the  ethical 
standard  laid  down  by  General  von  Bern- 
hardi  in  his  address  at  the  secret  meeting  in 
San  Francisco  a  year  earlier :  "  The  State  is 
above  morality."  By  him  and  by  the  whole 
German  Embassy  staff  in  Washington,  Bern- 
hardi's  dictum,  as  quoted  by  Dr.  Jordan,  was 


IN   THE  AMERICAN   REPUBLIC  1 53 

accepted :  "  Law  is  a  makeshift :  tlie  only- 
reality  is  force.  Law  is  for  weaklings  :  force 
is  for  strong  men  and  strong  nations." 

And  it  is  this  arrogant  denial  of  all  the 
moral  obligations,  of  nations  as  of  citizens, 
this  systematic  intriguing  against  the  peace 
of  every  nation  except  their  own,  and  this 
long-continued  campaign  of  Pan-Germanism 
in  America,  in  spreading  their  devilish  doc- 
trines of  "  Faith,  Hope  and  Hate," — it  is  this 
experience  of  what  German  "  kultur "  really 
means  in  American  life  that,  now  when  the 
guards  are  down,  makes  every  Prussian  a 
suspect  in  America,  and  makes  Pan-German- 
ism an  intolerable  ofifense  against  the  liberty 
and  the  honour  of  the  American  Republic. 

The  ideas  of  Pan-Germanism  can  be  allowed 
no  quarter  in  the  national  mind  that  gives 
free  play  to  the  North  American  idea  of  the 
right  of  a  free  people  to  govern  themselves. 


LECTURE  V 

THE    NORTH    AMERICAN  IDEA 
IN  THE  CANADIAN  DOMINION 


LECTURE  V 

THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  IDEA  IN 
THE  CANADIAN  DOMINION 

CANADA  was  the  first  colony  of  any 
Empire  in  all  the  world's  history 
to  come  to  national  self-government 
without  revolution,  without  separation  and 
without  sacrificing  the  background  of  the 
nation's  history. 

The  Coming  of  Canada 

Not  by  the  old  way  of  war,  and  not  at  the 
cost  of  the  alienations  war  always  brings,  but 
by  a  new  and  living  way,  the  way  of  normal 
evolution  and  peaceful  development,  came 
Canada  to  share  in  the  inheritance  of  the 
North  American  idea,  and  to  hold  on  this 
continent  the  most  strategic  place  of  Anglo- 
American  unity  in  the  English-speaking 
world. 

And  not  by  inheritance  alone,  nor  by  any 

157 


158         THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  IDEA 

happy  chance  of  geography  or  of  history, 
but  by  the  deliberate  and  persistent  choices 
of  the  Canadian  people,  was  it  determined 
that  Canada  should  stand  up  in  North 
America,  a  free  nation,  embodying  the  North 
American  idea.  Through  a  half  century  of 
confusion  and  conflict,  involving  sometimes 
fierce  political  struggles  and  sometimes  even 
armed  strife,  the  people  of  the  colonies  of 
Canada  came  up  to  the  rights  of  national 
autonomy  secured  through  the  British  North 
American  Act  of  1867. 

In  and  through  that  Act  of  the  Imperial 
Parliament,  the  people  of  Canada,  first  by 
their  representative  commissioners,  and  then 
through  their  responsible  Legislative  Assem- 
blies, declared  to  the  Government  and  Par- 
liament of  Britain  and  to  all  the  world,  the 
Canadian  interpretation  of  what  we  call  the 
North  American  idea — the  right  of  a  free 
people  to  govern  themselves. 

And  a  half  century  later,  when  the  scat- 
tered colonies  had  grown  into  a  federated 
and  united  Dominion  covering  a  half  conti- 
nent, and  when  the  far-separated  and  diver- 


IN  THE  CANADIAN  DOMINION         159 

gent  populations  had  become  a  nation  of 
eight  millions  in  the  epoch-making  war  days 
of  1 9 14,  Canada  was  not  disloyal  to  the  North 
American  idea,  nor  disobedient  to  that  heav- 
enly vision.  When  the  day  of  testing  and  of 
decision  came,  when  the  declaration  of  words 
had  to  be  registered  in  deliberate  and  costly 
deeds,  the  responsible  Parliament  of  Canada, 
with  the  consent  and  by  the  support  of  all 
political  parties  in  the  elected  House  of  Com- 
mons, declared  to  themselves,  to  their  con- 
stituents, and  to  all  men  everywhere,  that 
the  historic  Anglo-Saxon  idea  of  government 
— the  right  of  free  people  to  govern  them- 
selves— meant,  and  must  be  made  to  mean, 
freedom  and  self-government,  not  for  Canada 
alone  but  for  Belgium  as  well.  That  decla- 
ration of  the  world  significance  of  the  North 
American  idea  Canada  has  endorsed  in  the 
unstinted  sacrifices  of  all  her  people,  and  has 
sealed,  and  to  the  tragic  and  terrible  end 
will  continue  to  seal,  with  the  strong  young 
blood  of  the  best  of  her  sons. 

In  a  Canadian  university  and  to  a  Cana- 
dian audience  it  might  perhaps  be  thought 


l6o         THE  NORTH  AMERICAN   IDEA 

somewhat  out  of  place  to  present  with  such 
precision,  and  such  deliberateness  of  em- 
phasis, the  large  and  practical  freedom  of 
Canada  in  all  matters  that  touch  the  terri- 
tory, the  government  and  the  obligations 
of  the  Canadian  people.  Canadians  might 
be  supposed  to  know  the  range  of  their 
own  liberties,  to  consider  the  fact  of  their 
own  duties,  and  to  appreciate  the  worth  of 
their  own  inheritance.  To  say  that  Cana- 
dians do  not  always  know,  do  not  always 
consider,  and  do  not  always  appreciate  the 
deeper  meaning  of  self-government,  nor  al- 
ways answer  up  to  the  higher  obligations  of 
democracy,  is  but  to  say  that  they  are  a 
people  of  the  same  breed  and  democratic 
type  as  the  people  of  the  United  States. 
Each  people  have  their  advantages  and  their 
handicaps.  Both  are  alike  in  this,  that,  as 
the  child  with  the  parent,  as  the  junior  with 
the  senior,  Canadians  have  been  slow  to 
learn  from  the  longer  experience  of  Amer- 
icans, and  quick  to  resent  both  dictation  and 
advice ;  even  as  Americans,  in  the  youthful 
days  of  their  nation,  thought  Britain  an  old 


IN   THE  CANADIAN   DOMINION         l6l 

fogey,  whose  experience  was  not  worth  study- 
ing and  whose  example  was  to  be  shunned. 
With  so  much  in  common  we  have  often  de- 
cHned  to  learn  the  primary  things  in  each 
other's  history,  and  sometimes  we  have  be- 
haved with  the  brutal  frankness  of  blood 
relations. 

Americatt  Questions  Aboict  Ca^tada! s  Politics 

But  in  the  fierce  light  which  the  war  in 
Europe  has  turned  upon  Canada  and  affairs 
Canadian,  the  people  of  the  United  States, 
until  now  absorbed  in  their  own  affairs  and 
in  the  colossal  problems  of  life  in  their  own 
Republic,  now  ask  about  Canada  the  ques- 
tions asked  by  those  who  seriously  desire  to 
know.  And  it  is  in  response  to  that  desire 
which  one  meets  everywhere — the  desire  not 
of  acquaintances  and  neighbours,  but  of  allies 
and  brothers — that  I  venture  to  deal  in  a  very 
concrete  way  with  the  relation  of  Canada  to 
the  North  American  idea,  and  the  coming  of 
Canada  into  the  world-civilization  and  world- 
democracy  of  North  America. 

A  personal   experience  illustrates  what  I 


l62         THE  NORTH   AMERICAN   IDEA 

have  in  mind  more  clearly  than  it  might  be 
set  forth  in  an  abstract  statement.  Not  many- 
months  ago,  when  Canada  was  a  belligerent 
in  the  war  in  Europe  and  the  United  States 
still  a  neutral,  it  was  my  privilege  to  give  a 
commencement  address  at  a  university  in  one 
of  the  most  progressive  of  all  the  Northern 
States. 

In  that  university  address  I  ventured  to 
discuss  problems  of  Liberty,  of  Democracy 
and  of  Internationalism,  raised  several  times 
during  the  present  week  in  this  Cole  Lecture- 
ship here  at  Vanderbilt  University.  Empha- 
sis was  laid  on  the  primacy  of  Ideas  over 
Things,  on  the  Pauline  doctrine  of  the  abso- 
lute supremacy  of  the  things  of  the  Mind  over 
the  things  of  the  Flesh,  and  on  the  reactions 
of  national  Liberty  upon  the  life  and  thought 
of  a  free  people.  Being  a  Canadian  address- 
ing an  American  university,  it  was  convenient 
and  not  uninteresting  to  draw  illustrations 
from  Canadian  history  and  from  the  attitude 
of  Canada  to  the  world  conflict  in  Europe. 
I  recall  that  day's  experience  not  simply  be- 
cause it   was  peculiar,   but  rather  because  it 


IN   THE   CANADIAN   DOMINION         163 

touched  three  pohits  pertinent  to  matters  un- 
der review  in  this  present  discussion. 

At  the  close  of  the  lecture  on  that  occasion, 
one  gentleman  of  high  university  standing 
and  of  wide  academic  culture  asked  me  this 
question,  which  seemed  to  surprise  no  one 
present  except  myself :  "  Did  we  understand 
you  to  say  that  the  taxes  paid  by  Canada  to 
England  are  not  assessed  by  the  King  of 
England,  or  collected  by  the  English  Gov- 
ernment?" 

That  question  might  have  staggered  me, 
not  by  what  it  asked  of  me  but  by  what  it  im- 
plied in  him,  had  I  been  a  stranger  in  the 
United  States,  or  even  a  total  stranger  in 
American  university  and  college  circles.  As 
it  was,  my  words  in  reply  quite  failed  of  their 
mark,  and  seemed  to  sound  like  a  fairy  tale. 
Very  definitely  I  gave  unreserved  assurance 
that  never  once,  in  all  its  half  century  of  na- 
tional history,  did  the  Dominion  of  Canada 
pay  any  taxes  of  any  kind  to  "  England," 
either  directly  or  indirectly  ;  that  Canada  is 
not  taxed  for  the  maintenance  of  the  "  Eng- 
lish "  Government  either  at  home  or  abroad ; 


1 64         THE  NORTH   AMERICAN   IDEA 

that  Canada  has  made  no  contribution,  either 
through  direct  assessment  or  by  indirect  pay- 
ment for  the  upkeep  of  the  Navy  or  of  the 
Army  or  of  the  Royal  House  or  even  of  the 
King  himself ;  and  that,  in  any  case,  Canada, 
having  due  regard  to  the  facts  both  of  history 
and  of  geography,  does  not  recognize  any 
such  divided  sovereignty  as  the  King  of 
"  England  "  or  any  such  maimed  authority 
as  the  "  English  "  Government,  or  any  such 
sectional  power  as  the  "  English  "  Parliament, 
6ut  only  the  "  British  "  King,  the  "  British  " 
Government,  and  the  "  British  "  Parliament. 
And,  to  make  assurance  doubly  sure,  I  ven- 
tured to  assure  those  surprised  Americans 
that  there  was  no  power  anywhere  in  all 
"  the  United  Kingdom  of  Great  Britain  and 
Ireland  " — not  in  the  War  Office,  not  in  the 
Admiralty,  not  in  the  Government,  not  in  the 
Imperial  Parliament  itself — no  power  and  no 
desire  for  the  power  that  could  take  one 
dollar  out  of  the  Canadian  treasury  for  war 
expenses,  or  for  any  expenses  whatsoever,  or 
that  could  conscript  one  man  out  of  any 
Canadian  home  to  serve  in  the  army,  or  in 


IN  THE  CANADIAN   DOMINION         165 

the  navy,  in  the  flying  machines  or  in  the  sub- 
marines. It  is  that  assurance  of  national  in- 
dependence and  self-government  within  the 
world  Commonwealth  of  the  British  Empire 
that  gives  meaning  and  reality  to  Canada's 
historic  interpretation  of  the  North  American 
idea,  the  right  of  a  free  people  to  govern 
themselves. 

And  here  to-day  I  would  go  even  farther 
than  in  that  northern  university  I  went  last 
year.  Here  we  are  near  the  close  of  the 
third  year  of  the  war.  Britain  enlisted  and 
trained  and  outfitted  for  her  voluntary 
armies  more  than  five  millions  of  men,  and 
taxed  herself  for  her  own  armies,  and  for  the 
war  purposes  of  her  allies,  almost  uncounted 
millions  of  money,  but  never  once  did  an 
order  or  any  command  come  from  Britain  to 
Canada  for  one  conscripted  dollar  or  for  one 
conscripted  soldier.  What  Canada  has  done 
in  this  war  has  been  done  by  Canada  with- 
out constraint  and  without  compulsion,  done 
by  the  responsible  action  of  the  Canadian 
Government,  and  with  the  free  and  undivided 
authority  of  the  Canadian  people.     That  was 


1 66         THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  IDEA 

my  answer  then  to  the  first  question  touching 
Canada's  government,  put  to  me  on  that 
university  occasion.     That  is  my  answer  now. 

But  a  second  question  followed  the  first. 
It  was  in  these  words  :  "  If  Canada  pays  no 
taxes  to  England  what  good  is  Canada  to 
England  ?  " 

That  question  might  have  been  pertinent 
before  there  was  a  Canada.  A  hundred  and 
fifty  years  ago  some  very  eminent  British 
statesmen,  Whigs  and  Tories  alike,  were 
quite  of  the  opinion  that  a  colony  that  paid 
no  taxes  to  the  mother  country  was  both  a 
hindrance  and  a  menace.  And  even  fifty 
years  ago,  when  the  problem  of  Canadian 
Confederation  was  before  the  public  mind, 
had  Canada  hived  off  from  Britain,  the  re- 
sponsibilities of  Britain,  so  it  was  thought, 
would  have  been  greatly  lessened,  the  shore- 
line of  the  Seven  Seas  would  have  lost  some- 
thing of  its  terror,  the  cost  of  Britain's  naval 
defense  would  have  been  reduced,  and  the 
threatening  dangers  from  international  com- 
plications would  have  been  greatly  mini- 
mized. 


IN   THE   CANADIAN   DOMINION         167 

But  what  a  far  cry  it  is  from  this  day  of 
the  world-wide  commonwealth  of  free  na- 
tions to  that  day  when  colonies  and  overseas 
dominions  existed  for  the  enrichment  and  the 
gratification  of  the  homelands,  and  when  the 
notion  was  cherished  that  Canada's  chief 
purpose  was  to  provide  revenues  for  Britain. 
That  notion  takes  us  back  to  the  world  of 
two  centuries  ago,  and  to  the  ideas  of  empire 
which  prevailed  before  democracy  came  to 
its  own.  It  is  still  the  notion  that  enthralls 
the  minds  of  those  who  have  not  heard  that 
George  III  is  dead,  and  who  do  not  know 
that  with  him  died,  out  of  the  ideals  of 
British  sovereignty  at  least,  the  old  world 
conception  of  the  Divine  Right  of  Kings  and 
the  disproved  theories  of  despotic  imperi- 
alism. 

But  long  ago  a  new  day  dawned  on  the 
English-speaking  world.  It  is  now  the  day 
of  new  ideals  alike  for  masters  and  for  serv- 
ants. It  is  a  new  day  for  Empire  and  for 
Colony.  In  this  new  day  the  greatest  Em- 
pire in  all  the  world's  history  has  cast  off  its 
old  imperium  and  it  begins  to  glory  most 


l68         THE   NORTH   AMERICAN   IDEA 

of  all  in  its  pledge  and  its  promise  and  its 
proudest  achievement  as  the  world's  greatest 
Commonwealth. 

Then  came  the  third  question  from  my 
three  "  Job's  Comforters  "  in  that  American 
university.  It  was  in  these  terms,  expressed 
with  the  utmost  good-nature,  but  in  the  note 
partly  of  sorrow,  partly  of  wonder  and  partly 
of  regret :  "  Why  does  not  Canada  strike  for 
freedom  ?  " 

Strike  for  freedom  !  Freedom  from  what  ? 
And  there  was  found  nothing  in  citizenship, 
nothing  in  national  aspiration,  nothing  in 
the  democratic  ideal,  nothing  which  is  not 
Canada's  now  or  which  may  not  be  enjoyed 
by  Canada,  if  Canadians  supremely  desire  it 
and  unite  to  make  it  theirs. 

Canada's  First  Half-Centiiry 

And  all  of  that  in  freedom  and  in  democ- 
racy is  not  only  Canada's  to-day,  but  it  was 
Canada's  in  essence  and  in  spirit  and  in 
promise  when,  just  fifty  years  ago,  the  Con- 
stitution of  Canada,  as  a  united  Dominion 
formed  by  the  federation  of  the  several  Prov- 


IN   THE   CANADIAN   DOMINION         169 

inces,  was  framed.  The  essentials  of  that 
constitution  were  devised  and  agreed  upon 
by  representative  Canadian  statesmen  after 
prolonged  debate,  and  were  expressed  in  the 
resolutions  of  the  Quebec  Conference  in  1864. 

And  when  the  Confederation  conference 
met  in  London  in  1867,  the  Canadian  dele- 
gates knew  then,  as  they  had  known  before, 
that  so  far  as  the  Imperial  Government  was 
concerned  the  door  was  still  open — as  John 
Bright  very  plainly  said  in  Parliament — 
wide  open,  for  Canada's  withdrawal,  for 
Canada's  independence,  and  even  for  Can- 
ada's union  with  the  United  States. 

The  British  North  America  Act,  its  scope 
and  the  details  of  its  enactments,  and  even 
the  language  used  in  its  provisions — all  this 
was  the  work  of  Canadians.  The  British 
Government  and  the  Imperial  authorities 
recognized  the  fact  that  although  it  was  an 
act  of  the  Imperial  Parliament,  it  was  legisla- 
tion for  Canadian  application,  and  must  be 
what  responsible  Canadians  desired.  And  it 
was  their  expressed  desire  that  the  Canadian 
constitution  should  be  British  "  in  principle," 


lyo         THE  NORTH   AMERICAN   IDEA 

not  American,  in  that  it  provided  for  "re- 
sponsible government,"  and  for  the  union  of 
executive  and  legislative  functions,  and  defi- 
nitely held  the  executive  directly  and  im- 
mediately under  the  control  of  the  will  of  the 
people  as  expressed  through  Parliament. 

The  constitutional  development  of  Canada 
during  these  first  fifty  years  has  been  in 
harmony  with  those  original  principles ;  and 
every  amendment  to  the  British  North  Amer- 
ica Act  has  been  such,  and  only  such,  as 
Canada  deliberately  sought,  that  its  work- 
ings might  the  more  perfectly  serve  Canadian 
purposes  and  make  the  bounds  of  Canada's 
freedom  wider  yet. 

No  informed  Canadian  thinks  that  the 
summit  of  the  hill  has  yet  been  reached,  or 
that  the  last  word  in  Canada's  constitutional 
development  has  been  spoken.  But  the  road 
runs  forward  and  not  back.  The  larger 
freedom  will  not  require  any  violent  breach 
with  the  past  or  any  isolation  from  other  free 
peoples  in  other  parts  of  the  world  who  also 
are  working  out  the  vexed  problem  of  self- 
government.     Freedom  for  Canada,  and  the 


IN   THE  CANADIAN   DOMINION         17I 

right  of  Canadians  to  govern  themselves, 
does  not  mean,  on  Canada's  part,  any  dis- 
loyalty to  the  North  American  idea. 

Canada  and  the  British  Commonwealth 

The  coming  of  Canada  from  colonial  de- 
pendence to  national  self-government,  with- 
out revolution  from  the  mother  country,  and 
without  the  vital  losses  and  alienations  rev- 
olution always  brings,  not  only  was  some- 
thing new  in  world  politics,  but  also  it 
released  in  the  mind  of  the  world  a  new  idea. 
It  prepared  the  way  for  the  British  Common- 
wealth, and  in  the  mind  of  the  English- 
speaking  world  it  gave  the  idea  of  World 
Commonwealth  precedence  of  the  idea  of 
World  Empire. 

For  this  reason  the  British  North  America 
Act,  as  the  Constitution  of  Canada,  takes  its 
place,  its  righteous  place,  with  the  Declara- 
tion of  Independence  and  the  Constitution  of 
the  United  States.  The  one,  to  be  sure, 
meant  war  and  separation,  the  other  peace 
and  good-will,  but  together  they  constitute 
North  America's  incomparable  contribution 


172         THE  NORTH  AMERICAN   IDEA 

to  the  freedom,  the  progress  and  the  unity 
of  the  world. 

The  coming  of  Canada,  to  be  sure,  seemed 
a  comparatively  insignificant  incident  in  Im- 
perial affairs  a  half  century  ago.  There 
was  no  wild  ringing  of  joybells  in  London, 
and  even  in  the  inner  chambers  of  Imperial 
headquarters  in  the  Colonial  Office,  the 
Confederation  of  Canada  was  regarded  as 
useful  in  its  way,  but  quite  unimportant  so 
far  as  the  British  Empire  was  concerned. 
Lord  Blachford,  then  Permanent  Under- 
Secretary,  exhibited  the  average  reach  of 
official  imagination  when,  quite  soberly,  he 
declared : 

"  I  had  always  believed — and  the  belief 
has  so  confirmed  and  consolidated  itself  that 
I  can  hardly  realize  the  possibility  of  any  one 
seriously  thinking  the  contrary — that  the 
destiny  of  our  colonies  is  independence,  and 
that  in  this  view  the  function  of  the  Colonial 
Office  is  to  secure  that  our  connection,  while 
it  lasts,  shall  be  as  profitable  to  both  parties, 
and  our  separation,  when  it  comes,  as  ami- 
cable as  possible." 


IN  THE  CANADIAN  DOMINION         1 73 

The  bill  which  had  been  prepared  by  the 
delegates  from  Canada  passed  the  House  of 
Commons  as  the  Canadians  desired  it,  but 
the  debate,  while  cordial  enough,  gave  no 
suggestion  that  Parliament,  in  opening  the 
door  for  a  new  nation,  had  "  yearned  beyond 
the  sky-line  where  the  strange  roads  go 
down."  Everything  was  proper,  but  there 
was  no  vision.  In  introducing  the  measure 
in  the  House  of  Lords,  the  closing  paragraph 
of  Lord  Carnarvon's  speech  almost  caught 
the  gleam  ;  and,  read  in  the  light  and  filled 
with  the  meanings  of  fifty  years  after,  his 
words  seem  vaguely  prophetic  : 

"  We  are  laying  the  foundation  of  a  great 
State — perhaps  one  which  at  a  future  day 
may  even  overshadow  this  country.  But, 
come  what  may,  we  shall  rejoice  that  we 
have  shown  neither  indifference  to  their 
wishes  nor  jealousy  of  their  aspirations,  but 
that  we  honestly  and  sincerely  to  the  utmost 
of  our  power  and  knowledge  fostered  their 
growth,  recognizing  in  it  the  conditions  of 
our  own  greatness.  We  are  in  this  measure 
setting   the   crown   to   the   free  institutions. 


174         THE  NORTH   AMERICAN   IDEA 

which  more  than  a  quarter  of  a  century  ago 
we  gave  them,  and  therein  we  remove,  as  I 
firmly  believe,  all  possibilities  of  future  jeal- 
ousy or  misunderstanding." 

And  so,  on  May  loth,  the  Royal  procla- 
mation was  issued,  which  created  on  July 
I,  1867,  the  new  Dominion  of  Canada.  It 
was  only  the  beginning  of  a  new  nation  of 
the  British  type,  and  inheriting  the  British 
idea  of  self-government,  and  it  united  only 
four  Provinces.  But  it  was  a  beginning. 
And  the  idea  grew  until  the  Canadian  Con- 
federation covered  more  than  half  of  North 
America  between  the  Gulf  of  Mexico  and  the 
Arctic. 

Canada  was  the  first  born  in  the  British 
family  of  free  nations.  The  family  has 
grown,  and  is  still  growing.  Australia  in  the 
South  Pacific  followed  Canada.  Then  came 
New  Zealand.  Through  the  birth  pangs 
and  agony  of  war  South  Africa  claimed  its 
rightful  place.  Newfoundland  has  long  re- 
joiced to  hold  itself  a  self-governing  colony 
in  the  surge  and  fogs  of  the  North  Atlantic. 
And  when  the  world  war  broke  there  came 


IN   THE   CANADIAN   DOMINION         1 75 

from  out  the  farthest  East  with  pledges  of 
devotion  to  the  British  mother,  and  with  the 
sacrifices  none  but  sons  can  mal<:e,  India 
mysterious  and  mighty  standing  up  on  aUen 
soil  to  do  a  nation's  bit  at  the  fronts  of  battle, 
in  heroic  defense  of  the  British  Common- 
wealth ;  and  this  is  the  wonder  and  surprise 
of  a  series  of  world  surprises  when  an  Orien- 
tal empire  of  the  most  ancient  fame  comes 
into  the  Western  world  to  fight  side  by  side 
with  the  Allies  of  modern  Democracy  against 
the  latest  born  of  world  Empires  whose  chal- 
lenging alternative  was  "World-power  or 
Downfall." 

And  all  of  this  marvel  of  the  age,  this 
strange  meeting  of  the  East  and  the  West, 
this  flowing  together,  over  the  plains  of 
France,  of  the  life-currents  of  the  St.  Law- 
rence and  the  life-currents  of  the  Ganges — 
all  of  this  is  Freedom's  issue  from  what  was 
so  simply  done  when  Canada  rose  from  be- 
ing a  colony  and  began  to  be  a  nation,  and 
when  Britain  turned  away  from  the  false 
mirage  of  Empire  and  began  to  be  the 
Commonwealth  of  free  nations  that  to-day 


176         THE  NORTH   AMERICAN   IDEA 

swings    round    the  world    singing   together 
"  God  Save  the  King." 

Com 7non tvealth — Not  Imperiu tn 

The  Imperium  is  dead  :  and  after  this  war 
on  outgrown  and  autocratic  imperialism  there 
can  be  for  it  no  hope  of  resurrection. 

The  British  Empire  is  not  an  empire  at  all 
in  any  historical  sense.  The  King  is  not 
Emperor,  neither  in  Great  Britain  nor  in  any 
of  the  self-governing  Overseas  Dominions. 
And  even  the  new  tide,  "  Empress  of  India," 
taken  up  by  Queen  Victoria  for  political 
reasons  impressive  within  the  ancient  Indian 
Empire,  is  changing  its  content  as  India 
moves  out  and  moves  on  along  the  tried  and 
tested  British  road  towards  democratic  self- 
government. 

Indeed  the  term  "  Dominion,"  as  first  ap- 
plied to  Canada,  was  itself  the  convenient 
compromise  of  an  afterthought.  Fifty  years 
ago,  when  the  federation  of  the  Provinces  of 
Canada  was  being  consummated  by  Imperial 
legislation  in  London,  the  term  "  Kingdom 
of  Canada"  was  proposed  as  fidy  describing 


IN  THE  CANADIAN   DOMINION         1 77 

the  status  of  Canada  and  its  relationship  to 
the  Throne,  as  conceived  by  the  Canadian 
delegates.  That  title  would  probably  have 
been  adopted  were  it  not  for  the  objection  to 
it  pressed  by  Lord  Stanley  out  of  respect  for 
what  he  thought  would  be  republican  sensi- 
tiveness in  the  United  States. 

That  was  not  the  first  time,  or  the  last 
time,  in  which  the  views  of  Canada,  rightly 
or  wrongly  held,  were  thwarted  by  British 
statesmen  or  diplomats  out  of  regard  for  the 
opinions  or  the  interests  of  the  United  States. 
There  have  been  troubles  over  tarif?  matters, 
always  troublous,  because  usually  selfish,  and 
troubles  over  the  international  boundaries  be- 
tween the  two  countries :  the  Maine  bound- 
ary in  1842  ;  the  Oregon  boundary  in  1846, 
with  its  slogan,  "  Fifty-four  Forty  or  Fight"  ; 
and  the  Alaska  boundary  in  1903 — in  which 
British  jurists  or  diplomats  had  their  say. 
The  Canadian  political  enmities  engendered 
in  these  controversies  might  in  the  bitter  end 
have  led  to  war,  had  it  not  been  that  British 
experience  and  diplomacy  were  behind  and 
corrected  Canada's  youthful  impulse.    It  may 


1 78         THE   NORTH   AMERICAN   IDEA 

be  worth  while  for  Americans  to-day  to  re- 
member that  in  the  judgment  of  Canada  the 
attitude  of  Britain,  in  matters  that  involved 
Canada's  territorial  interests  on  this  conti- 
nent, has  invariably  been  friendly  to  the 
United  States.  And  it  is  no  crime  for  a 
native-born  Canadian  of  distinctly  demo- 
cratic views  to  confess,  and  to  confess  to- 
day in  an  American  university,  that  in 
some  of  those  disputes  in  which  the  mother 
country  took  sides  against  Canada  and 
in  favour  of  the  United  States,  the  events  of 
history  have  proved  Britain  not  only  wise 
but  right. 

And  Lord  Stanley  may  have  been  right 
in  1867,  when  he  blocked  the  way  to  the 
"Kingdom"  of  Canada,  and  left  the  way 
open  for  the  Canadian  "  Dominion."  Not 
that  consideration  was  needed  for  the  repub- 
lican ideals  or  jealousies  of  the  United  States. 
Those  things  perhaps  mattered  more  then 
than  they  would  matter  now.  With  shallow 
minds  and  for  vulgar  ambitions,  forms  often 
count  for  more  than  do  realities.  In  the 
United  States  to-day,   as  in   Canada,  there 


IN   THE   CANADIAN   DOMINION  1 79 

may  be  those  who  secretly  sigh  for  the  ex- 
ternal institutions  of  monarchy  and  espe- 
cially for  the  social  distinctions  a  "  Court " 
would  provide.  But  the  aspirations  of  that 
small  class  are  insignificant.  The  fact  of 
"  King "  has  its  advantages  even  for  some 
democratic  minds  over  the  fact  of  "Presi- 
dent," especially  in  the  aftermath  of  a  Presi- 
dential election  campaign.  But  these  dis- 
tinctions in  Britain  or  in  the  United  States 
give  the  country  neither  dignity  nor  endur- 
ing worth.  The  froth  that  floats  and  eddies 
around  a  throne  may  always  be  in  evidence 
at  Royal  functions  and  in  Society  journals. 
But  the  people  of  the  nation,  the  real  people, 
move  forth  and  right  on. 

But  King  of  Canada,  King  George  V  is 
to-day  in  fact  and  also  in  form.  His  Coro- 
nation in  Westminster  Abbey  on  June  21, 
191 1,  proclaimed  him  King,  not  of  the  King- 
dom of  Great  Britain  and  Ireland  alone,  but 
also  King  of  Canada  and  of  all  the  British 
Dominions  Overseas.  The  Governor-GeU' 
eral  of  Canada  is  the  King's  accredited  and 
accepted  representative,  with  powers  in  Can- 


l8o         THE   NORTH   AMERICAN   IDEA 

ada,  in  the  King's  absence,  neither  less  nor 
more  than  the  powers  of  the  King. 

Symbol  of  the  People^ s  Power 

But  those  powers  of  the  King  or  of  his 
representatives  are  not  the  powers  of  an  Em- 
peror, either  a  Caesar  of  Rome  or  a  Kaiser  of 
Germany.  There  is  no  Emperor  because 
there  is  no  imperium,  no  centralized  power 
holding  autocratic  rule  and  discharging  the 
functions  of  absolutism.  Legislation  in  Can- 
ada is  by  the  People's  Parliament.  The 
King's  advisers  in  all  things  are  the  People's 
Government.  That  Government  is  repre- 
sentative of  the  people,  and  every  day  it  is 
in  power  it  is  directly  and  immediately 
responsible  for  its  conduct  to  the  people's 
elected  representatives  in  the  House  of  Com- 
mons. And  when  a  Government  is  defeated, 
either  by  the  people  at  a  general  election  or 
any  day  by  the  people's  representatives  in 
the  House  of  Commons  on  any  Government 
measure,  it  goes  out  of  power.  There  is  no 
interregnum,  no  four  months  of  semi-sus- 
pended   animation   or   arrested   activity,   as 


IN  THE   CANADIAN   DOMINION         l8l 

you  sometimes  have  in  the  United  States. 
It  is  with  Parliament  as  it  is  with  the  King. 
The  King  never  dies.  The  same  breath  that 
wails  for  one  monarch,  "  The  King  is  Dead," 
shouts  for  his  successor,  "  Long  Live  the 
King."  The  King  is  but  the  symbol  of  the 
people's  power,  the  honoured  and  lawful 
sceptre  of  "  government  of  the  people  by  the 
people  and  for  the  people." 


LECTURE  VI 

THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  IDEA  IN 
AMERICA'S    INTERNATIONALISM 


LECTURE  VI 

THE   NORTH   AMERICAN   IDEA   IN 
AMERICA'S  INTERNATIONALISM 

NORTH  AMERICA'S  civilized  in- 
ternationalism is  North  America's 
greatest  achievement.  It  is  the 
chiefest  thing  North  America  has  to  show. 
It  is  the  noblest  expression  of  the  North 
American  idea. 

Other  things  have  been  done  on  this  con- 
tinent, new  and  great  and  surprising  things, 
which  are  heralded  as  among  the  wonders  of 
the  world,  the  enduring  marvels  of  all  the 
centuries.  Lines  of  transportation  have  been 
constructed  which  join  the  equator  to  the 
poles  ;  a  canal  has  crossed  the  hemisphere 
from  ocean  to  ocean  ;  insuperable  mountain- 
ranges  are  made  as  though  they  had  not 
been.  Things  have  been  done,  as  by  the 
waving  of  a  wizard's  wand,  which  mock  at 
the  achievements  of  other  continents. 

But  this  that  these  two  English-speaking 

185 


1 86    THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  IDEA 

nations  of  North  America  have  done,  and 
have  done  together,  and  done  through  more 
than  a  hundred  changing  years,  is  without 
parallel  on  any  continent,  without  precedent 
since  time  began.  It  is,  indeed,  not  a  thing 
at  all.  It  is  an  idea  :  the  noblest  expression 
of  the  North  American  idea.  It  is  a  promise  : 
the  confident  promise  and  the  matchless  pre- 
lude of  the  world's  Christian  civilization.  It 
is  a  spirit :  the  embodied  spirit  of  the  Inter- 
national Christ. 

North  America! s  Internationalism 

Citizens  of  the  United  States  and  citizens 
of  Canada  cross  and  recross  their  interna- 
tional boundary  a  thousand  times,  uncon- 
scious of  its  meaning  and  its  marvel.  But 
travel  its  historic  course  with  open  eyes,  and 
see  what  it  is.  Think  what  it  means,  and 
"  the  ground  whereon  thou  standest  is  holy 
ground." 

Westward  a  thousand  miles  from  the  surge 
of  the  Atlantic,  through  the  spreading  Gulf, 
up  the  mighty  River,  past  the  sentinel  fort- 
ress of   Quebec,   where   Britain  and  France 


IN   AMERICA'S   INTERNATIONALISM     187 

once  contested  for  a  continent,  past  Mount 
Royal  where  Jacques  Cartier  reared  the  tleur 
de  lis  and  cross,  past  the  Rapids  of  Lachine, 
sacred  through  the  centuries  to  the  faith  of 
La  Salle,  and  on  through  the  Thousand  Is- 
lands to  the  headwaters  of  the  mighty  St. 
Lawrence ! 

Westward  up  another  thousand  miles  of 
open  international  waterways — Lake  Ontario 
and  the  Niagara  River  I  Lake  Erie,  the 
Detroit,  and  the  St.  Clair!  Lake  Huron, 
the  St.  Mary's,  and  Lake  Superior  I  then 
down  the  Rainy  River  and  out  over  the 
Lake  of  the  Woods !  lakes  greater  than 
Europe's  seas,  and  carrying  on  their  peace- 
ful waters  the  abounding  commerce  of  both 
nations,  from  the  throbbing  heart  of  the  con- 
tinent to  the  ocean  currents  of  the  world  ! 

Still  westward  from  the  Great  Lakes, 
another  thousand  miles  to  the  foot-hills  of  the 
Rockies,  over  wide  open  prairies,  where  yes- 
terday the  buffalo  roamed,  his  range  disputed 
only  by  the  Red  Man,  where  to-day  the 
White  Man  has  his  many-mansioned  home, 
and  where  the  unguarded  international  divid- 


l88         THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  IDEA 

ing  line  never  answers  to  the  tread  of  an 
enemy  army  from  either  side  ! 

From  the  foot-hills  westward  again,  a  thou- 
sand miles  over  a  billowy  sea  of  mountains, 
through  whose  solitary  passes  no  army  ever 
files,  and  whose  echoing  peaks  give  back  no 
shriek  of  any  shell ! 

And  then  northward  up  the  coast,  and, 
from  the  Pacific,  far  more  than  another  thou- 
sand miles  northward  to  the  Arctic,  over  a 
primeval  wilderness  of  wealth  and  wonder, 
where  nation  keeps  faith  with  nation,  and 
where,  in  the  vast  solitudes  of  Nature,  even 
the  world's  outlaws  obey  the  law  1 

There  you  have  it  1  More  than  five  thou- 
sand miles  of  North  America's  international 
boundary  between  the  United  States  and 
Canada!  More  than  five  thousand  miles 
where  free  nation  meets  free  nation !  where 
vital  interest  touches  vital  interest !  where 
imperious  flag  salutes  imperious  flag  1  where 
a  people's  sovereignty  answers  to  a  people's 
sovereignty  !  More  than  five  thousand  miles, 
with  never  a  fortress!  never  a  battle-ship! 
never  a  yawning  gun  1  never  a  threatening 


IN  AMERICA'S   INTERNATIONALISM      1 89 

sentinel  on  guard  !  More  than  five  thousand 
miles  of  war's  neglected  opportunity  I  More 
than  five  thousand  miles  of  civilized  and 
Christianized  internationalism  !  God's  shin- 
ing sun  in  all  his  circling  round  lights  up  no 
such  track  of  international  peace,  and  crosses 
no  such  line  of  international  power,  anywhere 
else  in  all  the  world. 

And  this  that  these  two  nations  of  America 
have  done,  this  unprecedented  and  unparal- 
lelled  achievement  of  North  American  good- 
will, is  the  work,  not  of  spiritless  and  back- 
ward races,  but  of  the  most  enterprising  peo- 
ples in  the  foremost  files  of  time.  Other  na- 
tions on  other  continents  can  boast  of  their 
past,  but  with  these  young  democracies  of 
North  America  is  the  future  of  the  world. 

The  United  States  and  Canada,  two  democ- 
racies with  their  two  flags,  have  kept  the 
peace,  the  peace  with  honour,  not  for  one  brief 
spasm,  or  through  one  sudden  outburst  of 
good-will.  For  more  than  a  hundred  years, 
a  hundred  restless,  turbulent  years,  while  the 
boundary  lines  of  every  other  continent  have 
blazed   in   war  and  dripped   with  blood,  the 


igo        THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  IDEA 

internationalism  of  North  America  has  held  ; 
and  to-day,  in  the  smitten  face  of  Europe's 
international  tragedy,  North  America  gives 
the  unbroken  pledge  of  a  far  greater  peace 
for  all  the  world  through  a  millennium  yet  to 
come. 

The  Last  Anglo- America7i  War 

It  was  not  only  the  latest  war  between 
Britain  and  America;  that  War  of  1812  was 
also  the  last. 

Never  again  shall  the  nations  that  speak 
the  English  tongue,  that  inherit  the  demo- 
cratic tradition,  and  that  stand  true  to  the 
ideals  of  freedom,  have  recourse  among 
themselves,  either  for  justice  or  for  liberty,  to 
the  vain  and  barbaric  arbitrament  of  war. 
And  just  because  it  is  the  last  instance  of 
Anglo-American  armed  conflict,  that  war  on 
our  international  boundary,  more  than  a 
hundred  years  ago,  carries  with  it  the  special 
interest  peculiar  to  a  relic. 

How  genuinely  a  relic  war  has  become  be- 
tween the  United  States  and  Britain  is  brought 
home  to  any  American  or  Canadian  mind  in 


IN  AMERICA'S   INTERNATIONALISM      I9I 

these  days  of  the  world's  war,  by  any  chance 
revival  of  some  story  of  cruelty  and  injustice 
that  dates  back,  say,  to  Nathan  Hale  and  his 
gallant  services  to  General  Washington,  or  to 
the  equal  hardships  and  injustices  suffered  in 
the  same  war  by  United  Empire  Loyalists. 
Those  incidents,  whether  false  or  true,  like  the 
faded  records  of  an  old  family  quarrel,  had  in 
them  elements  of  bitterness  and  strife  which 
to-day  do  credit  to  neither  side.  The  human 
elements  in  the  story,  as  illustrating  personal 
heroism  or  fidelity  or  noble  sacrifice,  have 
their  permanent  value,  but  in  the  hands  of  the 
story-tellers  in  school  text-books  their  exag- 
gerations and  misplaced  emphasis  have  done 
little  but  damage  in  North  America's  civiliza- 
tion. 

We  now  know,  and  we  all  know,  that  war 
everywhere  and  always  is  cruel,  is  lawless,  is 
a  hideous  and  ghastly  crime  against  civiliza- 
tion. For  this  reason  the  internationalism 
and  good-will  of  North  America,  on  the  lips 
of  the  peoples  of  both  countries,  declare  that 
between  our  two  nations  there  shall  never 
again  be  war.     For  us  it  would  be  without 


192         THE  NORTH   AMERICAN   IDEA 

excuse.  For  us  and  for  our  nations  the  North 
American  idea  asserts  the  right  of  every  free 
people  to  govern  themselves.  That  idea 
holds  all  our  people.  In  these  days  of  the 
world's  marvellous  internationalism,  illus- 
trated in  the  community  of  international  in- 
terest at  Washington — American,  British, 
French,  Russian,  Italian — the  grip  that  holds 
us  all  is  not  fear,  and  is  not  force.  It  is  the 
growing  and  constraining  power  of  the  demo- 
cratic idea.  The  foundation  stone  of  North 
America's  internationalism  is  in  the  freedom 
of  our  peoples  to  league  together  their  re- 
sources of  wealth,  of  foods,  of  soldiers  and  of 
civilians,  with  the  leagued  free  peoples  of 
Europe  and  of  the  world,  for  defense  of  the 
world's  common  good. 

The  Refiex  from  Europe 

It  is  in  this  new  light,  the  light  of  the 
world's  interdependence,  and  from  this  point 
of  view  of  the  Anglo-American  unity,  that 
to-day  with  steady  blood-beat  we  can  go 
back  to  the  events  of  the  War  of  1812. 

At  that  time  the  disturbed  and  involved 


IN   AMERICA'S   INTERNATIONALISM      I93 

situation  in  Europe  was  the  occasion  of  war 
in  America.  The  seeds  of  that  war  were 
sown  long  before,  in  the  family  quarrels  and 
family  animosities  that  belonged  to  the  War 
of  the  Revolution,  The  war  on  the  Canadian 
border  in  18 12-14  was  the  reflex  of  the  long 
war  in  Europe  between  Britain  and  France. 
American  sympathy  was  with  France,  run- 
ning back  in  gratitude  to  the  struggles  of 
the  Revolutionary  War,  and  cherishing  the 
name,  and  his  devotion  to  the  American 
cause,  of  the  Marquis  de  Lafayette. 

In  that  European  war  between  France  and 
Britain,  the  United  States  officially  was 
neutral.  But  in  several  of  the  States  pop- 
ular feeling  was  not  neutral.  Many  of  the 
leaders  of  the  people,  still  remembering  the 
old  struggle  with  George  III,  were  against 
Britain  and  their  sentiments  were  pro- French, 

This  pro-French  feeling,  to  be  sure,  was 
part  of  the  smouldering  fires  of  the  old  strife. 
It  was  utterly  oblivious  of  the  fact  that,  al- 
though the  campaign  cries  in  1812  rang  the 
changes  on  America's  rights  in  Europe's 
trade,  the  damage  done  to  America's  com- 


194         THE  NORTH  AMERICAN   IDEA 

mercial  interests  by  France  was  far  greater 
than  the  damage  done  by  Britain.  The  anti- 
British  party  in  the  United  States  also  dis- 
regarded the  deeper  fact  that  both  then  and 
earlier  official  France,  in  defiance  of  the 
political  theories  of  Lafayette  and  Rocham- 
beau,  was  dominated  by  the  Bourbon  autoc- 
racy. 

The  spirit  that  inspired  the  France  of  that 
day  was  the  arrogant  and  masterful  spirit 
of .  absolutism,  the  restless  spirit  of  Napo- 
leon, that  reached  out  for  the  overthrow  of 
free  government  and  democratic  institutions 
everywhere.  The  revived  and  ruthless  am- 
bition of  Csesar  found  expression  in  the  new 
Napoleonism,  which  contended  against  Brit- 
ain's supremacy  at  sea. 

Napoleon's  true  objective  was  the  im- 
perium  of  all  the  world.  Napoleonism 
fought  Britain,  because  it  gready  feared 
Britain's  democracy,  even  though  it  re- 
spected the  forms  of  monarchy  still  prevalent 
there ;  and  it  professed  alliance  with  the 
American  Republic,  while  it  loathed  and 
hated    American   republicanism   even    more 


IN   AMERICA'S   INTERNATIONALISM      1 95 

than  it  feared  British  power.  In  France  at 
that  time  of  the  Bourbons,  Democracy  was 
both  feared  and  hated,  as  surely  as  Social 
Democracy  is  outlawed  under  Kaiserism  and 
the  war-lords  in  Germany  to-day.  The  day 
of  France's  new  birth  had  not  yet  come. 

The  international  situation  in  America  was 
still  further  complicated  by  the  fact  that 
when  war  was  declared  in  the  United  States, 
none  of  the  colonists  in  Canada  stood  more 
resolutely  for  British  connection,  or  fought 
more  bravely  against  the  invaders  from  the 
United  States  than  did  the  French  Canadians, 
who,  in  that  war,  made  the  name  of  Cha- 
teauguay  immortal. 

Youthful  and  headstrong  leaders  of  aggres- 
sive and  belligerent  American  opinion,  like 
Henry  Clay  of  Kentucky,  and  John  C. 
Calhoun,  cherished  the  lofty  ambition  of 
seeing  the  Stars  and  Stripes  wave  trium- 
phant over  the  North  American  continent  all 
the  way  from  Mexico  to  the  North  Pole. 
Clay's  eloquent  exhortation,  which  did  duty 
on  many  a  platform  and  in  many  school- 
houses,  was  in  these  words :  "  Call  out  the 


196         THE  NORTH  AMERICAN   IDEA 

ample  resources  of  the  country,  give  them 
judicious  direction,  prosecute  the  war  with 
the  utmost  vigour,  strike  wherever  we  can 
reach  the  enemy  at  sea  or  on  land,  and 
negotiate  the  terms  of  peace  at  Quebec  or 
Halifax." 

The  war  of  181 2-14  dragged  out  its  costly 
length,  but  in  it  the  scattered  handfuls  of 
colonists  in  Canada,  English-speaking  and 
French-speaking,  alone  were  united.  Britain 
was  not  seriously  active  in  it,  because  Brit- 
ain's hands  were  full  in  Europe.  The  Ameri- 
cans were  divided  in  the  politics  of  the  war, 
many  of  their  leaders,  even  in  Congress, 
were  opposed  to  it.  Canadians  alone  were 
united  ;  and,  although  at  the  time  they  did 
not  know  it,  Canadians  alone,  of  French 
blood  as  of  British  blood,  fought  for  the 
North  American  idea.  They  defended  on 
their  own  soil  their  Anglo-Saxon  right  to 
govern  themselves. 

American  historians  to-day  see  quite 
clearly  what  was  confused  to  many  American 
leaders  at  that  time,  and  what  was  made 
misleading  by  many  American  story  writers 


IN  AMERICA'S   INTERNATIONALISM      197 

since.  But  informed  and  sober  history 
agrees  with  Professor  Albert  Bushneli  Hart 
of  Harvard  University : 

"  Nothing  but  a  total  want  of  understand- 
ing of  the  conditions  in  Europe  would  have 
brought  about  the  War  of  181 2.  The  con- 
tinental system  had  broken  down,  because 
Russia  would  no  longer  cut  oflf  the  trade  in 
American  ships.  The  result  of  this  breach 
was  Napoleon's  Russian  campaign  of  181 2  ; 
his  success  would  have  totally  excluded 
American  commerce  from  the  Baltic  and 
would  probably  have  resulted  in  the  over- 
throw of  England.  The  Americans  were 
assisting  the  cause  of  a  great  tyranny  and  a 
great  commercial  monopoly.  During  181 2 
and  1813,  while  the  Americans  were  vainly 
struggling  to  capture  a  few  petty  forts  on 
the  Canadian  frontier,  Napoleon  was  falling 
back  step  by  step  ;  and  on  April  6,  18 14, 
he  abdicated  his  throne,  and  a  general  Euro- 
pean peace  was  made." 

But  costly  and  useless  though  it  was,  that 
War  of  18 1 2  did  one  thing  for  North  America 
which  was  greatly  worth  while :    it  cleared 


198         THE  NORTH   AMERICAN   IDEA 

the  air.  The  Treaty  of  Peace  was  not  signed 
at  Quebec  or  at  Hahfax,  as  Henry  Clay  de- 
manded in  181 2,  but  at  Ghent,  on  Christmas 
Eve,  1814,  with  Clay  himself  as  one  of  the 
American  negotiators.  And  that  Treaty 
made  no  mention  of  the  rights  of  neutrals, 
and  it  left  the  Canadian  frontier  at  the  Great 
Lakes,  where  it  had  been,  and  where,  more 
than  a  hundred  years  later,  it  is  to-day,  and 
where,  in  the  judgment  of  both  nations,  it 
shall  remain. 

And  in  clearing  the  air  as  between  Britain 
and  the  United  States,  the  War  of  181 2,  the 
last  armed  conflict  of  the  world's  two  great 
powers  of  English-speaking  civilization,  dug 
the  foundations  for  North  America's  inter- 
nationalism. After  the  smoke  had  cleared 
away,  each  side  began  to  see  that  the  other 
was  not  a  Despotism  but  a  Democracy,  and 
that  between  democracies  war  is  an  advan- 
tage to  neither  and  a  damage  to  both. 

A  Hundred  Years  After 

How  completely  this  North  American  idea 
has  permeated  the  thinking  of  both  nations 


IN   AMERICA'S   INTERNATIONALISM      1 99 

was  illustrated  on  September  10,  1913,  at  the 
celebration  of  the  one  hundredth  anniversary 
of  the  day  of  decision  in  1813,  the  Battle  of 
Lake  Erie  at  Put-in-Bay.  That  celebration 
was  held  in  sight  of  the  scene  of  the  historic 
naval  engagement  in  which  Commodore 
Barclay  commanded  the  British  iieet  and 
Commodore  Perry,  made  immortal  by  that 
day's  victory,  commanded  the  American. 
Oliver  Hazard  Perry  has  been  one  of  the 
heroes  of  generations  of  American  school 
children,  but  at  that  centennial  celebration 
the  unadorned  facts  of  history  were  held 
without  boasting  for  either  side.  It  was  not 
national ;  it  was  international.  I  recall  that 
unusual  occasion  with  a  deepening  sense  of 
its  international  significance,  not  for  the 
United  States  and  Canada  alone,  but  for 
democracy  everywhere. 

There  at  the  historic  rendezvous  of  Put-in- 
Bay,  on  the  south  shore  of  Lake  Erie,  under 
the  presidency  of  the  Governor  of  Ohio, 
thousands  of  the  celebrants  of  the  naval  con- 
flict of  a  full  century  before  assembled  from 
many  of  the  neighbouring  States.    A  military 


200         THE  NORTH  AMERICAN   IDEA 

touch  was  added  by  the  presence  of  a  detach- 
ment of  the  Rhode  Island  Artillery  from  the 
native  State  of  Commodore  Perry,  and  in  the 
ceremonial  the  Church  was  represented  by 
Bishop  Perry  of  Rhode  Island  and  Arch- 
deacon Cody  of  Toronto. 

The  official  spokesman  for  the  United 
States  in  the  commemoration  program  was 
ex-President  William  H.  Taft,  and  mine  was 
the  honour  and  the  duty  of  speaking  for  the 
British  and  the  Canadians  who  shared  in 
that  last  naval  battle  of  the  Anglo-Saxon 
world. 

Perhaps  the  most  memorable  incident  in 
that  Battle  of  Lake  Erie  on  September  lo, 
1813,  was  the  very  significant  fact  that,  after 
the  batde,  the  contestants  who  so  earnesUy 
fought  against  each  other,  met  for  the  burial 
of  their  officers  who  fell  in  the  fight,  three 
British  and  three  American,  and,  true  to  the 
military  and  naval  traditions  of  their  nations, 
the  surviving  soldiers  and  seamen  marched 
two  and  two  British  and  American,  and  de- 
posited in  a  common  burial  plot,  with  cere- 
monial   honours,    and  the  appointed  burial 


IN  AMERICA'S   INTERNATIONALISM     20I 

service  of  the  Church  of  England,  the  bodies 
of  their  heroic  dead. 

That  burial  service,  within  sight  of  the 
scene  of  the  struggle,  shared  by  both  sides 
and  under  the  folds  of  both  flags,  closed  the 
very  last  naval  conflict  of  the  two  nations, 
and  that  War  of  1812  was  the  last  the  Eng- 
lish-speaking world  would  ever  know.  And 
one  hundred  years  afterwards,  in  September, 
1913,  the  representatives  of  these  two  nations, 
the  great  Republic  of  the  United  States  and 
the  great  Dominion  of  Canada,  met  at  that 
hallowed  spot,  and  gathered  up  what  re- 
mained of  the  dust  of  those  heroes  of  the 
days  of  conflict,  reverently  deposited  it  in 
one  common  coffin,  over  which  they  draped 
their  two  flags,  the  Union  Jack  and  the  Stars 
and  Stripes,  and  to  the  solemn  sound  of  the 
Dead  March,  marched  two  and  two  to  the 
Perry  memorial,  the  magnificent  shaft  which 
has  since  been  completed,  and  there  was 
reinterred  the  dust  which  North  America 
guards  as  a  sacred  heritage  for  all  genera- 
tions of  North  America's  internationalism. 

That  last  naval  battle,  and  its  centennial 


202         THE   NORTH   AMERICAN   IDEA 

commemoration,  must  never  be  forgotten. 
They  never  will  be  forgotten  by  the  two 
nations  and  the  two  peoples  that  there 
pledged  their  faith.  On  that  centennial  oc- 
casion I  spoke  this  sentence  which  to-day 
has  an  accent  almost  prophetic :  "  In  the 
light  of  North  America's  experience  the  in- 
ternational boundary  lines  of  Europe  are 
barbaric.  They  cannot  long  endure."  Little 
did  I  dream  that,  before  twelve  months  had 
passed,  the  barbarism  of  Europe  would  kindle 
the  fires  of  hate  and  desolation  for  all  the 
world.  But  if  the  words  of  warning  and 
fear  then  spoken  have  been  tragically  fulfilled 
in  Europe,  even  more  truly  and  altogether 
splendidly  have  been  fulfilled  the  words  of 
America's  international  good-will.  I  venture 
to  quote  these  closing  paragraphs  from  that 
address,  as  it  appears  in  the  official  report, 
only  recently  published — "  The  Perry's  Vic- 
tory Centenary." 

America :   Vision,  Message,  Obligation 

Although  these  words  were  spoken  in  Ohio 
in   the   year  before  the  war,   I   speak  them 


IN  AMERICA'S   INTERNATIONALISM     203 

now  in  Vanderbilt  University  in  Tennessee, 
crammed  as  they  now  are  with  the  deeper 
meaning  of  what  I  then  called  "  America's 
Vision,  America's  Message,  America's  Obli- 
gation"  : 

"All  this  growth  of  nationhood  in  North 
America,  this  sanctity  of  national  aspiration, 
the  commonplace  among  us  to-day,  had 
its  beginning  a  hundred  years  ago,  when, 
through  the  smoke  of  battle,  Britain  and 
America  began  to  see  eye  to  eye.  The  dis- 
tance that  vision  has  brought  these  two  na- 
tions, the  revolution  it  has  wrought,  may  be 
measured  by  the  diflference  between  what 
happened  at  Lake  Erie  in  1813  and  what 
happened  in  1898  on  Manila  Bay.  The  sig- 
nificance of  the  change  is  expressed  in  to- 
day's celebration.  At  this  place  and  on  this 
day  our  deepest  concern  is  not  with  the  wars 
of  the  past,  but  with  the  peace  of  the  future ; 
not  with  the  triumphs  or  the  defeats  of  yes- 
terday, but  with  the  responsibilities  and  obli- 
gations of  to-morrow  ;  not  with  the  glory 
that  either  nation  achieved  a  hundred  years 
ago,  but  with  the  message  which   both  na- 


204         THE   NORTH  AMERICAN   IDEA 

tions,  Speaking  in  the  name  of  our  common 
North  American  civilization,  shall  give  to  the 
world  through  the  hundred  years  to  come. 

"  Our  message  here  to-day,  spoken  by  two 
voices,  one  from  the  United  States,  the  other 
from  Canada,  is  one  message.  It  is  Amer- 
ica's message  that,  on  this  continent,  between 
two  proud  peoples,  the  barbarism  of  brute 
force  has  long  yielded  to  civilized  interna- 
tionahsm.  It  is  the  assurance  that  Canada's 
national  standing  on  this  continent  binds  the 
British  Empire  and  the  American  Republic 
in  one  world-spanning  English-speaking  fra- 
ternity. On  all  continents  and  on  all  seas 
the  power  of  North  America  is  the  combined 
power  of  the  United  States  and  Canada,  plus 
the  power  of  Britain  and  of  the  British  Do- 
minions in  Africa,  on  the  South  Atlantic  and 
beyond  the  Pacific.  These  are  all  bound 
together,  each  with  all  the  others,  for  the 
maintenance  of  that  principle  of  nationhood  : 
any  people  that  desires  to  be  free  and  is  fit  to 
be  free  ought  to  be  free  and  must  be  free. 
That  principle  means  peace  and  freedom  in 
the  English-speaking  world. 


IN  AMERICA'S   INTERNATIONALISM      205 

"  More  than  that.     What  this  principle  of 
nationhood    has  done  for  America  and  for 
the  English-speaking  fraternity  it  yet  will  do 
for  the  world.     In  the  light  of  North  Amer- 
ica's  experience  the  international  boundary 
lines    of    Europe   are   barbaric.     They   can- 
not long  endure.     In  our  own  day  war  has 
begun  to  be  seen  not  merely  as  cruel,  bur- 
densome, brutal,  but  as  too  foolish  and  too 
futile   for  sane  and  civilized  peoples.     The 
nations  of  civilization  will  yet  leave  war  be- 
hind, as  civilized  men  have  left  behind  the 
street  fight  and  the  duel.     As  individual  cit- 
izens have  found  the  only  sure  vindication 
of  personal  honour,  and  the  only  true  pro- 
tection of  vital  interest,  to  be  in   respecting 
the  personality  and   the  personal  interests  of 
others,  and  in  trusting  for  justice  to  the  law 
of  their  land,  so  are  the  nations  learning,  and 
so  the  nations  must  learn,  that  the  only  sure 
vindication  of  national  honour  and  the  only 
certain  protection  of  vital  interests  is  in  re- 
specting the   nationality   of   others,  and   in 
trusting  for  justice  in  the  growing  conscience 
of  the  race,  codified  in  international  law  and 


2o6         THE  NORTH   AMERICAN   IDEA 

expressing  itself  through  international  arbi- 
tration. 

"  On  that,  as  on  a  sure  foundation,  rests 
the  hope  of  the  world's  peace.  Once  men 
dreamed  of  peace  through  the  world  sover- 
eignty of  some  master-mind,  like  Alexander, 
or  some  ruling  race  like  the  Romans.  But 
that  dream  of  peace,  the  peace  not  of  free 
men  but  of  weaklings  and  slaves,  was 
doomed  forever  when  Napoleon  and  his 
army  staggered  back  through  the  snows  of 
Russia  under  the  curse  of  God. 

"  But  a  new  day  has  dawned,  dawned  for 
the  statesmen,  dawned  for  the  nations.  It  is 
the  day  of  national  rights  and  national  re- 
sponsibilities. The  two  nations  of  America 
have  seen  the  coming  of  that  day,  have  seen 
it  through  these  generations  of  peace,  have 
seen  it  and  are  glad.  We  of  to-day,  stand- 
ing on  this  historic  boundary  line,  a  bound- 
ary no  longer  of  separation  but  of  union,  are 
pledged,  we  and  our  nations  with  us,  pledged 
to  preach  this  gospel  of  freedom,  good-will  and 
peace.  This  is  America's  vision  ;  this  Ameri- 
ca's message  ;  this  America's  obligation." 


IN   AMERICA'S   INTERNATIONALISM      207 

Lord  Palmerston  as  a  World- Prophet 

The  question  of  internationalism  in  North 
America  at  this  time  justifies  me  in  making 
public  use  of  a  memorandum  handed  to  me 
only  yesterday.  It  presents  an  interesting 
historical  side-light  on  the  Anglo-American 
unity,  to  which  prominence  has  been  given 
throughout  this  course  of  Lectures.  It  car- 
ries the  name  of  the  great  British  statesman, 
Lord  Palmerston,  and  it  records  a  "  proph- 
ecy "  made  by  him  to  a  group  of  British  and 
American  diplomats,  at  a  private  gathering 
in  London,  early  in  1841.  No  Life  of  Pal- 
merston contains  any  reference  to  it,  and,  so 
far  as  I  know,  publicity  has  not  been  given 
to  it  in  any  form.  But  the  "  prophecy " 
itself  has  such  historical  interest,  and  the 
presence  in  Washington,  at  this  very  hour, 
of  the  Right  Hon.  Arthur  J.  Balfour,  and  the 
circumstances  and  purposes  of  his  mission 
from  Britain  to  the  United  States — all  these 
factors  combine  to  give  timeliness  to  this 
Anglo-American  message  from  out  the  his- 
toric past  of  three-quarters  of  a  century  ago. 
This  memorandum  was  given  to  me  at  the 


208         THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  IDEA 

close  of  yesterday's  lecture  by  a  venerable 
clergyman — of  nearly  fourscore,  who  "  has 
been  pastor  of  Presbyterian  churches  here  in 
Nashville  for  over  forty  years,"  the  Rev. 
J.  H.  McNeilly — and  whose  pastorate  in 
Houston,  Texas,  in  1878,  permitted  him  as 
he  says  to  become  intimately  acquainted 
with  one  of  the  parties  in  the  case,  "  the 
Hon.  Ashbel  Smith,  a  most  remarkable  man, 
one  of  that  strong  band  of  pioneers  who  won 
the  independence  of  Texas.  He  had  been 
educated  at  Yale  College,  completing  his 
course  in  medicine  in  Paris,  where  he  was 
under  the  direction  of  Lafayette  in  183 1, 
through  the  cholera  epidemic. 

"  When  Texas  was  established  as  an  inde- 
pendent Republic  "—Mr.  McNeilly  continues 
in  his  memorandum — "  Dr.  Smith  was  sent 
as  Minister  to  England  and  France,  having 
charge  of  both  legations.  He  was  held  in 
close  friendship  by  Louis  Philippe.  The  inci- 
dent about  Lord  Palmerston  he  told  me  in 
the  course  of  an  intimate  discussion  of  the 
Russo-Turkish  war,  which  was  raging  at  the 
time.     He  was  then  seventy-five  years  old, 


IN  AMERICA'S  INTERNATIONALISM      209 

and  had  been  a  diligent  and  intelligent  stu- 
dent of  history.  He  had  known  the  inef- 
fective struggles  of  Europe  for  liberty  in 
1848.  He  had  studied  the  wars  by  which 
the  German  Empire  was  consolidated  by 
Bismarck's  brain  and  von  Moltke's  sword. 
He  had  as  keen  sympathy  for  France  as  he 
had  detestation  for  Germany. 

"  In  the  course  of  one  of  our  personal  talks, 
Dr.  Smith  told  me  how  that,  in  1841,  he  was 
in  London  in  charge  of  his  of^cial  duties. 
Many  British  and  American  diplomatic  ap- 
pointees were  in  the  city  at  the  time,  going 
to  or  returning  from  their  various  stations. 
The  Englishmen  gave  a  banquet  to  the 
Americans,  at  which  no  foreigner  was  pres- 
ent. It  was  exclusively  for  British  and 
American  diplomats. 

"  At  the  banquet  the  speech-making  was 
mainly  good-natured  banter  as  to  what 
would  happen  if  the  Daughter  should  put  on 
airs,  and  her  old  Mother  should  conclude  to 
administer  a  lesson  on  humility.  The  last 
speaker  was  Lord  Palmerston,  at  that  time 
Minister  of  Foreign  Affairs  in  the  Melbourne 


2IO         THE   NORTH   AMERICAN   IDEA 

Cabinet.  After  a  few  minutes  of  genial  talk, 
he  became  far  more  serious,  deprecating  any 
idea  or  even  idle  talk  of  war  between  the  two 
countries.  Then  he  uttered  this  prediction, 
which  so  impressed  Colonel  Smith  that,  as 
soon  as  he  went  to  his  room,  he  wrote  down 
the  exact  words,  as  nearly  as  he  could  recall 
them,  used  by  Lord  Palmerston: 

"'Those  of  us  who  from  our  positions 
are  familiar  with  the  trend  of  opinion  in 
Europe,  and  the  policies  of  the  various 
Governments,  know  that  great  changes 
are  coming.  How  soon  we  cannot  know  ; 
for  it  takes  time  for  great  movements  to 
come  to  a  head.  But  I  am  confident  that, 
about  the  end  of  this  century  or  the  be- 
ginning of  the  next  century,  the  greatest 
war  in  the  history  of  Europe  will  occur. 
It  will  not  be  a  war  for  territory,  nor  for 
commercial  advantage.  It  will  be  a  con- 
flict to  the  death  between  antagonistic 
ideals  or  policies  of  governments,  that  is, 
between  Liberalism  and  Absolutism  (or 
as  we  would  say,  Democracy  and  Aris- 


IN   AMERICA'S   INTERNATIONALISM      211 

tocracy).  In  that  war  England  must, 
from  her  historic  position,  lead  the  forces 
of  Liberalism,  and  she  will  gather  to  her 
side  those  forces  in  Europe  that  then 
may  be  striving  for  liberty.  By  a  like 
historic  necessity,  Russia  must  lead  the 
forces  of  Absolutism,  and  the  strength  of 
organized  despotism  will  be  arrayed  with 
her.  In  that  desperate  conflict  of  ideas 
and  principles,  England's  strength  and 
her  resources  will  be  tried  as  never  be- 
fore in  her  history.  She  will  be  strained 
to  the  utmost  limit  to  preserve  her  very 
existence  as  a  free  and  independent  Na- 
tion. And  if  in  that  hour  of  her  direst 
need  she  cannot  reach  forth  her  hand 
and  bring  help  from  her  mighty  Daugh- 
ter across  the  sea,  then  woe  be  to  the 
hopes  of  the  world  for  civil  and  religious 
liberty.'  " 

In  his  comment  on  this  remarkable  predic- 
tion by  Lord  Palmerston,  Mr.  McNeilly  asks 
this  question  which  represents  the  serious 
thought    and    high    resolve    of   every    true 


212  THE  NORTH   AMERICAN   IDEA 

American  mind  to-day  :  "  Can  it  be  that  this 
world  war  now  devastating  Europe  is  the  ful- 
fillment of  Lord  Palmerston's  prophecy,  with 
Germany,  instead  of  Russia,  in  the  lead  of 
autocracy?  Surely  the  entrance  of  the 
United  States  into  the  conflict  ought  to  be  a 
largely  determining  factor,  on  the  side  of 
righteousness,  against  the  most  cruel  and 
devilish  theory  of  the  State  ever  held  by  a 
despot  1 " 

World  Democracy  f 07'  World  Liberty 

There  are  those  among  us  who  deny  that 
democracy  and  liberty  go  together,  or  that 
democracy  gives  any  assurance  against  the 
spirit  of  domination.  Democracies,  they  say, 
have  been  as  ruthless  in  their  power  as  au- 
tocracies, as  eager  to  extend  their  sway,  as 
careless  of  the  right  of  other  peoples  to  self- 
government.  They  point  to  the  democracies 
of  ancient  Greece  which  pursued  to  their  own 
destruction  insatiate  careers  of  conquest. 
They  point  to  Republican  Rome  which 
brought  the  known  world  under  its  iron  law. 
They   point  to  the  democratic  cities  of  the 


IN   AMERICA'S   INTERNATIONALISM      213 

Middle  Ages  with  their  pitiless  wars.  They 
point  to  Revolutionary  France  which  had 
scarcely  unfurled  the  flag  of  "  Liberty,  Equal- 
ity, and  Fraternity  "  when  it  made  dominion 
its  ideal  and  Napoleon  its  God.  And  they 
imply  that  the  democracies  of  to-day  offer  no 
security  against  the  recrudescence  of  the  same 
blind  spirit  of  tyranny. 

If  this  were  so  then  the  outlook  would 
indeed  be  black,  for  it  is  clear  at  least  that 
if  democracy  cannot  safeguard  the  world 
against  the  menace  of  militarism  no  other 
way  of  safety  can  be  found.  If  that  fails  our 
hopes  are  vain,  and  our  dearest  efforts  mere 
futility.  There  is  no  bright  dawn  beyond 
the  darkness  of  the  night  of  war.  Our  ideals 
are  "the  baseless  fabric  of  a  vision,"  and  the 
sacrifice,  struggle,  and  devotion  by  which  we 
seek  to  realize  them  are  a  mockery  of  waste. 

But  this  accusation  against  democracy  is 
false.  Ancient  so-called  democracies  were 
in  reality  slaveholding  oligarchies  in  which 
the  true  democratic  spirit  could  not  possibly 
exist.  The  most  democratic  state  of  the 
ancient  world,   the  state  which  prided  itself 


214         THE   NORTH   AMERICAN   IDEA 

most  on  its  liberality  of  spirit,  was  Athens  in 
the  later  part  of  the  fifth  century  B.  c,  and  it 
never  admitted  as  citizens  more  than  a  frac- 
tion of  its  inhabitants.  Democracy  as  we 
understand  it  was  unknown  to  Greece  and 
Rome,  and  but  faintly  understood  in  the 
caste-dominated  states  of  the  Middle  Ages. 
Where  slavery,  serfdom,  caste  prevail,  the 
foundation  of  democracy,  the  sense  of  per- 
sonal right  and  obligation,  the  sense  of  the 
citizenship  of  all  men,  which  allows  to  others 
the  liberty  we  claim  for  ourselves,  is  never 
secured.  Democracy  is  a  process,  not  even 
to-day  an  accomplished  fact,  an  evolution, 
not  a  fulfillment  attained  in  any  past  stage  of 
the  world's  history. 

Why  then  do  we  believe  that  democracy 
stands  for  liberty,  not  for  liberty  within  the 
democratic  nation  alone  but  for  liberty  of  the 
nations  in  respect  of  one  another,  for  world 
liberty  ?  Because  just  in  so  far  as  democracy 
has  developed  it  has  shown  itself  the  enemy 
of  aggression  without  as  well  as  of  tyranny 
within,  the  friend  of  justice  between  nations 
as  well  as  of  fraternity  between  citizens.     It 


IN  AMERICA'S   INTERNATIONALISM      215 

is  only  because  of  their  undemocratic  institu- 
tions— and  the  institutions  controlHng  foreign 
relations  are  the  last  to  be  democratized — 
that  modern  democracies  have  shown  aggres- 
sive tendencies.  When  France  threw  down 
her  feudal  tyranny  she  instinctively  pro- 
claimed the  brotherhood  of  nations,  and 
might  have  continued  in  that  spirit  were  it 
not  that  Europe's  dread  of  revolutionary  re- 
publicanism surrounded  her  with  enemies. 
And  now  the  world  has  again  a  signal 
instance  of  the  difference  between  the  out- 
look of  autocracy  and  democracy.  What- 
ever dangers  inhere  in  the  Russian  Revolu- 
tion, it  has  proclaimed  in  tones  of  undying 
sincerity  the  protest  of  the  democratic  masses 
of  the  people  against  any  policy  that  savours 
of  aggression  or  annexation.  Here  at  least 
it  has  spoken  in  the  true  accents  of  democ- 
racy. 

But  both  these  examples,  revolutionary 
France  in  the  eighteenth  century  and  revolu- 
tionary Russia  in  the  twentieth,  enforce  an- 
other lesson.  It  is  that  democracy  is  insecure 
in   any  country  unless   it   meets   a  kindred 


2l6         THE  NORTH   AMERICAN   IDEA 

spirit  of  democracy  in  the  world  outside. 
It  is  that,  in  the  long  run,  for  world  liberty 
world  democracy  is  necessary,  that  no  one 
state  can  enjoy  in  freedom  and  peace  the 
fruits  of  democracy  save  in  a  world  that 
enjoys  them  with  her.  In  so  far  as  they 
understand  this  lesson  all  democratic  states 
will  cling  together,  will  band  themselves 
together  in  fraternal  alliance  for  their  own 
security  and  to  bring  nearer  the  coming  of 
democracy  all  over  the  earth.  May  not  the 
Washington  Conference  symbolize  this  per- 
manent coming  together  of  the  democracies, 
the  democracies  of  Europe  meeting  in  coun- 
cil with  the  democracies  of  the  West.  For 
long  they  have  stood  apart,  as  if  democracy 
were  a  thing  to  be  realized  and  preserved  in 
isolation,  until  the  lightnings  of  the  world 
catastrophe  revealed  their  need  of  one 
another,  their  dependence  on  one  another, 
the  world's  disaster  in  their  separation,  the 
world's  promise  in  their  union.  It  meant 
more  than  common  council  in  a  common 
danger,  it  signified  the  recognition  of  a 
common  spirit,  the  kinship  of  all  democracies. 


IN   AMERICA'S   INTERNATIONALISM     217 

Many  obstacles  and  misunderstandings  have 
hitherto  prevented  the  full  recognition  of  this 
kinship,  but  chiefly  the  fears  engendered  by 
lapses  on  one  side  or  the  other  from  the 
democratic  ideal.  We  may  well  hope  that 
these  will  now  be  dissipated,  and  the  era 
when  all  democracies  will  build  on  their 
international  interdependence  ushered  in. 
And  this,  in  some  form,  may  express  the 
deeper  motive  behind  the  great  welcome 
accorded  in  America  to  the  Allied  mission. 

The  meeting  at  Washington  would  then 
be  only  an  adumbration  of  the  greater 
council  of  the  democracies  yet  to  be  born. 
The  whole  world  is  beginning  to  ripen 
towards  democracy,  and  Russia  is  the  first 
fruits  of  the  harvest.  In  the  revelation  of  war 
the  peoples  are  learning  everywhere  that 
their  hope  is  in  self-government.  The  North 
American  idea  is  pervading  the  world.  Even 
among  our  enemies  there  are  signs  that  the 
great  masses  are  turning  to  the  democratic 
solution.  These  signs  should  fill  us  with 
hope,  and  we  should  take  infinite  care  that 
no  act  of  ours  shall  discourage  them  from 


2l8         THE  NORTH   AMERICAN   IDEA 

following  that  road.  For  we  too  have 
learned  that  only  in  world  democracy  is 
world  liberty  fulfilled,  the  security  of  the 
nations  that  have  already  embraced  democ- 
racy being  dependent  on  the  achievement  of 
liberty  by  the  nations  that  are  still  in  bond- 
age. The  old  ideal  of  world  power,  world 
empire,  has  meant  downfall  for  all  who  have 
pursued  it,  has  meant  the  enslavement  of  the 
world,  conquerors  and  conquered  alike,  but 
the  new  ideal  of  world  democracy  means  the 
liberation  of  the  world.  Democracies  as 
naturally  come  together,  when  they  are  true 
democracies,  in  cooperative  good-will  as 
autocracies  fall  apart  in  conflict.  The  com- 
ing together  of  the  democracies  is  the  neces- 
sary and  inevitable  operation  of  the  law  of 
the  world's  good-will,  the  necessaiy  and  in- 
evitable precondition  of  the  establishment  of 
the  world's  good-will. 

The  Faith  Basis  of  hiternational  Reconstruc- 
tion 
A  great  act  of  faith  is  demanded  of  all  the 

peoples   who  have  fought  for  what  they  be- 


IN  AMERICA'S   INTERNATIONALISM     219 

lieve  to  be  the  cause  of  justice  and  liberty  in 
this  war.  It  is  the  faith  in  human  nature,  in 
the  humanity  not  only  of  themselves  but  also 
of  the  great  suffering,  misled  masses  of  their 
foes.  To  believe  this  is  really  a  part  of  the 
whole  democratic  creed,  which  implies  that 
every  people,  if  they  are  free,  if  they  are 
released  from  the  bondage  of  false  obses- 
sions or  tyrannous  institutions,  will  have  the 
wisdom,  as  they  also  have  the  right,  to 
govern  itself.  It  is  part  of  the  whole  demo- 
cratic creed,  but  in  face  of  a  war  like  this  it 
is  a  peculiarly  difficult  part.  Yet  it  is  hardly 
too  much  to  say  that  without  that  faith, 
whatever  else  may  be  won,  the  permanent 
basis  of  reconstruction  is  lost. 

In  the  establishment  of  that  faith,  America, 
in  the  very  hour  in  which  she  is  most  ear- 
nestly preparing  for  war,  is  leading  the  way, 
thus  revealing  the  inner  quality  of  her  demo- 
cratic beliefs.  President  Wilson  has  ex- 
pressly distinguished  between  the  German 
government  and  the  German  people.  He 
has  declared  that  "  there  is  only  one  sort  of 
peace  that  the  peoples  of  America  could  join 


220         THE   NORTH   AMERICAN   IDEA 

in  guaranteeing.  .  .  .  Only  a  peace  be- 
tween equals  can  last — only  a  peace  the  very 
principle  of  which  is  equality  and  a  common 
participation  in  a  common  benefit.  The 
right  state  of  mind,  the  right  feeling  between 
nations  is  as  necessary  for  a  lasting  peace  as 
is  the  just  settlement  of  vexed  questions  of 
territory  or  of  racial  and  national  allegiance." 
A  peace  without  the  reestablishment  of  in- 
ternational amity  is  only  the  suspension  of 
war.  Peace  demands  amity  as  certainly  as 
enmity  provokes  war. 

If  it  is  true  that,  as  Lloyd  George  has  said, 
the  Peace  Conference  **  will  settle  the  destiny 
of  nations,  the  course  of  human  life,  for  God 
knows  how  many  ages,"  how  overwhelm- 
ingly important  it  is  that  the  nations,  or 
their  representatives,  should  enter  upon  it 
with  one  purpose  above  all  others  in  their 
hearts,  with  one  master  resolve  as  to  the 
outcome,  such  a  settlement  as  will  prevent, 
so  far  as  the  foresight  of  men  can  prevent, 
the  recurrence  of  the  catastrophe  which  has 
desolated  our  age. 

There  are  two  main  alternatives  open,  and 


IN   AMERICA'S   INTERNATIONALISM      221 

the  choice  between  them  may  well  be  the 
most   momentous   in   history.      One   is   the 
consolidation   of  the  present  League  of  the 
Allies,  together  with  such  neutrals  as  might 
be  induced  to  join,  into  a  permanent  defen- 
sive alliance.     Such  a  league  is  advocated  in 
influential  quarters,  and  it  falls  in  with  the 
war-begotten  mood  of  many  men  in  Britain 
and  in  France.     Who  can  wonder  at  this  in 
the  light  of  what  has  happened  since  the  war 
began?     And   yet  a  scheme  of  this  sort,  a 
settlement   that    went   no  further   than  this, 
would  be  a  shipwreck  of  the  greater  hopes 
of  the  world.      The  security  it  would  give 
would    be     partial    and    impermanent.      It 
would   render    impossible    the   construction 
of  a  real   international  law ;  it  would  be  a 
barrier  to   the  operation  of  the  law  of  the 
world's  good-will.    It  would  destroy  all  hope 
of    a    concerted   plan    for   the   reduction   of 
armaments  ;  it  would  leave  the  roots  of  inter- 
national   fears    and    suspicions    still    living 
beneath  the  soil  of  peace.     It  would  foster 
in  the  excluded  peoples  a  desperate  endeav- 
our   to    establish    an   opposing   balance   of 


222         THE  NORTH   AMERICAN   IDEA 

power.  It  would  foster  the  economic  rivalry 
of  the  opposing  leagues,  and  their  competi- 
tive exploitation  of  the  less  developed  parts 
of  the  earth.  It  would  delay  the  mutual 
understanding  which  is  the  mother  of  coop- 
eration, the  only  permanent  foundation  of 
peace.  It  would  therefore  accord  ill  with 
the  North  American  idea.  The  United 
States  would  never  enter  heartily  into  an 
alliance  of  this  kind,  and  so  it  could  have  no 
stability  in  itself.  And  the  bitterest  throes 
that  the  world  has  ever  endured  would  bring 
to  birth  no  redeeming  offspring  of  peace. 

The  fundamental  objection  to  a  recon- 
struction of  international  relations  which 
would  merely  perpetuate  and  solidify  the 
existing  alliance  is  that  it  would  be  a  denial 
of  that  faith  which  alone  would  remove  the 
mountains  of  hostility,  the  Pelion  upon  Ossa 
which  the  war  has  piled  between  us  and  our 
foes.  No  people  can  have  security  unless 
all  peoples  have  security.  No  people  can 
be  wholly  free  unless  all  peoples  are  free. 
We  must,  in  rebuilding  the  international 
world,  look  beyond  governments  to  peoples. 


IN   AMERICA'S   INTERNATIONALISM      223 

We  must  believe  that  our  enemies,  awakened, 
by  the  inconceivable  loss  and  suffering  of 
the  war,  to  the  awful  fruits  of  false  ideals, 
will  of  themselves  overthrow  all  institutions 
which  rest  upon  and  all  governments  which 
inculcate  such  ideals.  If  we  have  this  faith 
our  enemies  will  justify  in  time  our  faith  ;  if 
we  have  it  not,  we  will  instead  confirm  their 
fears.  That  faith  alone  will  bring  into  being 
the  federation  of  the  world.  Without  it 
there  is  only  the  prospect  of  endless  division, 
unceasing  mutual  suspicion,  keeping  before 
men's  minds  the  alternatives  of  subjection 
and  domination,  fostering  the  fear  of  the 
former  in  the  many  and  the  hope  of  the  latter 
in  the  few. 

That  is  why  we  must  work  for  the  second 
alternative,  the  establishment,  out  of  the  vast- 
ness  of  world  desolation,  of  a  real  League  of 
Nations,  of  a  community  of  peoples  as  far 
extending  as  their  interdependence.  The 
two  great  obstacles  in  the  way  of  such  a 
consummation  are  the  spirit  of  hatred  and 
revenge  engendered  by  the  war,  and  the 
doctrine  of  the  absolute  sovereignty  of   the 


224         THE  NORTH   AMERICAN   IDEA 

State.  But  if  the  great  settlement  means  the 
renunciation  of  conquest  and  repudiation  of 
mihtarism,  as  it  must,  then  the  spirit  of  hatred 
and  revenge  may  well  be  stilled  in  the  thought 
of  woes  already  suffered  and  tears  already 
shed.  In  the  sight  of  the  bereavement  of 
the  world  the  idea  of  further  punishment  will 
fade  away.  Neither  on  reward  nor  on  pun- 
ishment can  a  civilization  so  ruined  be  re- 
stored. There  can  be  only  one  punishment 
that  counts,  the  visitation  of  sorrow  already 
so  awful  in  its  universality ;  only  one  reward 
worth  while,  the  better  reconstruction  of  the 
world.  And  this,  as  all  historical  precedents 
go  to  show,  can  be  attained  only  if  all  the 
warring  peoples  enter  into  a  great  alliance, 
substituting  community  of  interest  for  divi- 
sion, cooperation  for  conflict,  good-will  for 
hate.  Peace  on  earth  cannot  be  secured 
save  by  good-will  among  men. 

The  second  obstacle,  the  doctrine  of  the 
absolute  sovereignty  of  the  State,  has  in  the 
past  been  a  standing  barrier  to  the  establish- 
ment of  the  only  kind  of  alliance  which 
could    possibly   secure  international   amity. 


IN  AMERICA'S   INTERNATIONALISM      225 

It  is  a  doctrine  that  nearly  every  state  has 
been  zealous  to  defend,  and  that  nearly 
every  political  thinker,  Hobbes  and  Austin 
no  less  than  Fichte  and  Hegel,  Rousseau  no 
less  than  Treitschke,  have  sought  to  justify. 
If  it  stands,  then  nothing  can  bind  the  sov- 
ereign will  of  a  state,  and  nothing  it  does 
can  be  a  breach  of  law.  It  is  as  just  in  vio- 
lating as  in  making  treaties.  It  owes  no 
responsibility,  and  from  its  decisions  there 
can  be  no  appeal.  If  it  stands  there  can  be 
no  true  law  of  nations,  for  each  is  necessarily 
a  law  to  itself,  the  final  arbiter  and  judge  of 
what  it  does.  On  what  then  does  this  doc- 
trine rest  ?  Only  on  a  false  pride  of  rulers 
and  peoples.  For  it  proclaims  the  inde- 
pendence of  the  state,  and  all  the  facts  of 
political  evolution  show  that  states  are  inter- 
dependent, bound  up  in  each  other's  destiny, 
affected  by  the  wealth  and  poverty  of  one 
another,  affected  still  more  by  the  ideals  of 
one  another.  "  Am  I  my  brother's  keeper?" 
This,  in  the  early  ages  of  the  world,  was  the 
plea  of  the  violator  of  the  nearer  law.  "  Am 
I  my  brother's  keeper?"     This  is  still  the 


226         THE  NORTH   AMERICAN   IDEA 

plea  of  the  state  that  breaks  the  law  of  na- 
tions. And  the  voice  of  the  brother's  blood 
cries  to  heaven  from  the  ground. 

North  America  has  been  leading  the  way 
in  removing  both  of  these  obstacles  to  a 
league  of  nations.  The  United  States  has 
repudiated  the  thought  of  revenge.  She  has 
recognized  her  vital  interest  in  the  European 
conflict,  but  she  has  also  recognized  that  this 
interest  cannot  be  a  selfish  one.  One  of  her 
best  American  interpreters  puts  the  case  thus  : 
"  Any  attempt  to  define  American  interest  in 
Europe  can  lead  only  to  one  conclusion.  We 
have  no  territory  to  acquire,  no  strategic 
frontiers  to  win,  no  unredeemed  provinces, 
no  trade  routes  to  defend.  We  can  win 
nothing  from  this  war  unless  a  good  Europe 
arises  from  it.  We  cannot  even  end  the 
submarine  menace  by  defeating  Germany, 
because  the  submarine,  as  a  weapon,  will 
remain  after  the  war.  There  is  no  single 
thing  we  can  win,  except  a  stable  peace  in 
Europe.  That  we  must  win  if  our  own 
democratic  experiment  is  to  have  a  decent 
chance." 


IN  AMERICA'S   INTERNATIONALISM     227 

North  America  in  the  World's  War 

This  entry  of  the  United  States  into  the 
European  war  is  indeed  the  last  extension 
of  the  North  American  idea.  In  the  past 
she  has  stood  for  it  in  the  American  hemi- 
sphere. The  Monroe  Doctrine,  in  its  pure 
form,  was  the  expression  of  that  idea  as  a 
governing  principle  for  the  New  World 
alone.  But  often  there  was  associated  with 
it  the  view  that  the  New  World  stood  apart 
by  itself,  as  if  it  could  be  isolated  from  the 
Old.  Her  political  evolution  has  gradually 
been  revealing  the  error  of  that  view.  The 
seas  unite  as  much  as  they  divide.  The 
march  of  events  compelled  the  American  Re- 
public to  support  in  the  Far  East  the  same 
policy  of  democratic  responsibility  which  she 
had  assumed,  in  the  face  of  many  dangers, 
nearer  home.  She  saw  that  the  stability  of 
China  concerned  her,  the  right  of  that  people 
to  govern  themselves,  as  well  as  the  stability 
of  a  South  American  republic.  It  was  inev- 
itable that  her  sense  of  responsibility  could 
not  stop  there.  At  the  last,  at  this  crisis  of 
the  world's  history,  she  took  the  final  step, 


228         THE  NORTH   AMERICAN   IDEA 

declaring  that  the  responsibility  of  a  demo- 
cratic state  can  have  no  limits,  that  all  are 
bound  up  with  one  another,  that  none  can  be 
indifferent  to  what  befalls  the  rest. 

And  as  the  United  States  and  Canada  are 
now  carrying  into  the  most  dreadful  war  in 
history  the  principle  of  the  inter-responsibility 
of  the  nations,  so  they  will  carry  it  into  the 
ensuing  peace.  Thus,  and  only  thus,  will 
North  America  lead  the  world  towards  the 
establishment  of  that  great  league  of  nations, 
chastened  of  militarism  by  the  final  revelation 
of  the  meaning  of  war,  which  must  be  the 
permanent  witness  and  embodiment,  over  all 
the  world,  of  the  North  American  idea. 

What  was  begun  in  destruction  must  be 
continued  in  construction.  The  greater  the 
destruction  the  greater  is  the  necessity  of  re- 
building ;  and  never  was  that  necessity  so 
imposed  on  men  as  it  will  be  at  the  ending 
of  this  war.  Shall  we  be  half-hearted  in  re- 
building when  we  have  set  no  limit  to  pulling 
down?  Shall  we  be  content  with  a  partial 
league  of  nations  that  will  but  perpetuate  the 
cleavage   of   to-day?     Or  shall  we   dare  to 


IN   AMERICA'S   INTERNATIONALISM      229 

hold  that  faith  in  humanity  which  will  invite 
all  nations,  friends  and  foes,  to  participate  in 
the  rebuilding  of  the  world,  and  to  enter  with 
us  in  repentance  on  the  way  of  healing  ? 
May  not  this  well  be  the  most  momentous 
alternative  ever  presented  for  the  decision  of 
the  world  ?  If  North  America  leads  in  giving 
the  answer,  it  may  be  a  greater  triumph  for 
the  North  American  idea  than  it  has  ever 
achieved  before. 

Service  :  the  Key- Note  of  De^nocracy 

Several  years  ago,  at  the  time  when  Land 
Reform  was  the  batde-cry  in  the  fierce  po- 
litical struggles  then  raging  in  Britain,  I 
visited  the  home  of  my  ancestors  in  one  of 
the  most  spacious  glens  in  all  the  Highlands 
of  Scodand.  For  centuries  that  glen,  and 
the  country  round  about,  had  been  the  breed- 
ing-place of  the  historic  clans  whose  blood 
mingles  in  my  veins. 

Ever  since  the  days  of  fateful  Culloden, 
every  Highland  countryside  suffered  the  loss 
of  the  best  of  its  human  breed.  Sometimes 
it  was  war  that  did  it.     Endless  and  almost 


230         THE   NORTH   AMERICAN   IDEA 

inevitable  wars  at  the  ends  of  all  the  earth 
made  call  to  the  men  from  the  Scottish  glens. 
The  pipes  of  war  sounded  wild  and  high 
through  every  valley,  and  called  the  clans- 
men forth  to  fight  for  their  chieftain  or  for 
their  sovereign,  on  many  a  tragic  battle-field 
of  history. 

When  it  was  not  war  that  called  the 
children  of  the  peat  cottage  and  the  parish 
school  from  "  their  ain  dear  glen,"  it  was  the 
curse  of  the  land  laws  that  drove  them  from 
the  crowded  sheilings  and  the  steadings  of 
their  fathers  to  the  vast  and  vacant  spaces  of 
America,  or  of  Australia,  or  of  Africa,  or  of 
India,  to  leave  room  in  Scotland,  as  in 
England  and  in  Ireland,  for  the  all-powerful 
and  autocratic  landed-aristocracy,  with  their 
grouse  and  their  pheasant  and  their  big- 
horned  stag.  The  lilt  of  the  folk-song  and 
the  solemn  drone  of  the  Gaelic  psalm  died 
away,  and  in  their  places  was  heard  only  the 
lonesome  call  of  the  stag  and  the  "  hallo  "  of 
the  huntsman. 

It  was  with  those  old  ancestral  feelings 
and   broodings    in    my  heart,  and  with   the 


IN  AMERICA'S   INTERNATIONALISM     231 

"  gloomy  memories  "  of  many  a  glen  in  the 
back  of  my  mind,  that  I  arrived  one  day  in 
Edinburgh,  and  made  my  way,  on  the  top  of 
a  tram-car,  from  the  Caledonian  up  the 
Lothian  Road.  Surging  about  the  entrances 
to  the  King's  Theatre,  I  came  upon  a  great 
crowd,  agitated  and  restless  as  if  something 
was  in  the  wind.  The  cause  was  obvious 
when,  at  the  side  of  the  tram,  I  caught  sight 
of  the  self-possessed  but  irrepressible  Mrs. 
Pankhurst,  with  the  light  of  "  Votes  for 
Women  "  in  her  eye,  and  at  her  side,  keep- 
ing silent  guard,  a  stolid  Edinburgh  police 
officer.  The  presence  of  such  company — the 
meeting  of  turbulent  ideas  and  police  author- 
ity— found  adequate  explanation  in  the  fact 
that  inside  the  theatre  a  great  political  meet- 
ing was  under  way,  with  Winston  Churchill 
making  a  campaign  speech  on  the  vexed 
land  question. 

Here  was  the  political  issue  of  my  High- 
land experience  of  the  land  laws — the  acute 
sense  of  injustice  to  the  common  people 
awakened  by  the  land  monopoly  enjoyed 
and  exercised  by  the  hereditary  lords  of  the 


232  THE   NORTH   AMERICAN   IDEA 

land.  From  the  crowded  lobby  door  of  the 
theatre  I  caught  this  sentence  from  Churchill's 
speech,  spoken  to  those  sober-minded  citi- 
zens of  Edinburgh :  "  The  time  has  come 
when  the  most  searching  question  put  to  a 
man  is  not,  What  have  you  got  ?  but  this, 
How  did  you  get  it  ?" 

I  have  thought  long  and  earnestly  over 
that  question  with  which  Churchill  disturbed 
the  satisfied  content  of  the  landlords  in 
Britain  in  the  years  of  discontent  and  political 
upheaval  before  the  war.  But  another  ques- 
tion, more  penetrating,  more  searching,  came 
to  me  then,  and  comes  to  me  now,  a  question 
that  loses  none  of  its  pertinence  or  power  by 
being  transferred  from  Britain  to  America, 
and  that  is  only  intensified  and  made  more 
direct  and  personal  by  the  coming  of  the 
war.  It  is  a  question  that  goes  more  deeply 
to  the  very  roots  of  our  whole  social  problem, 
and  probes  to  the  heart  our  theories  of  life 
and  its  supreme  uses,  in  these  days  of  world- 
travail  and  of  national  self-examination  :  not 
the  arresting  question,  "  What  have  you 
got  ? "    or   even    the   still    more   perplexing, 


IN   AMERICA'S   INTERNATIONALISM     233 

"How  did  you  get  it?"  but  this,  that 
searches  every  conscience  and  tries  the  reins 
of  every  heart,  "  What  are  you  doing  with 
it?" 

In  these  stern  days  that  question  is  put  to 
every  man.  And  that  question  cannot  be 
evaded,  or  postponed,  or  silenced  with  an 
airy  wave  of  the  hand.  It  goes  right  to  its 
mark.  It  haunts  the  ways  of  every  life.  It 
tests  the  services  of  every  nation.  What  are 
you  doing  with  the  opportunities  that  are 
yours  ?  with  the  privileges  ?  with  the  superi- 
orities of  which  you  boast  ? 

You  man  of  wealth,  whether  your  wealth 
was  inherited  from  another,  or  was  earned 
by  yourself — What  are  you  doing  with  it? 
You  man  of  power,  whether  personal  power 
dependent  on  what  you  are,  or  official  power 
dependent  on  the  place  you  occupy — What 
are  you  doing  with  it  ?  You  man  of  genius, 
or  of  special  gift,  or  of  attractive  grace,  you 
whose  endowment  enables  you  to  do  readily 
and  well  what  others  can  do  only  with  diffi- 
culty or  not  at  all — What  are  you  doing  with 
it?     You  nation  of  privileged  citizens,  you 


234         THE  NORTH  AMERICAN   IDEA 

whose  free  citizenship  is  a  heritage  from  all 
the  ages  of  the  past,  you  whose  democracy 
was  won  for  you  by  all  the  struggles  of 
America  and  of  Europe  through  those  cen- 
turies up  from  despotism — What  are  you 
doing  with  it  ? 

There  is  no  dodging  that  question.  The 
supreme  moral  question  faces  us  and  follows 
us  and  will  not  let  us  go.  There  is  not  an 
advantage  in  our  modern  life,  whether  in  the 
United  States  or  in  Canada,  but  some  es- 
sential element  in  it  is  ours  because  of  the 
services  and  the  sacrifices  made  by  men  in 
other  lands  who  went  our  ways  before  us, 
and  who  made  ready  for  our  coming.  If 
in  very  and  in  splendid  truth  we  are  "  the 
heirs  of  all  the  ages,"  that  inheritance  also 
makes  us  the  trustees  for  all  who  follow 
after.  Every  achievement  which  gives  us 
superiority  by  so  much  makes  us  debtors. 
And  that  debt  cannot  be  paid  except  by 
service  for  service  and  by  life  for  life. 
Service  is  the  measure  of  our  civilization. 
Service  for  others  is  the  key-note  of  our  de- 
mocracy. 


IN   AMERICA'S   INTERNATIONALISM      235 

Crozvned  for  Service 

Service  is  indeed  the  key-note  of  democ- 
racy. And  democracy,  wiien  it  comes  to  it- 
self and  comes  to  its  own,  is  crowned  for 
service. 

That  was  the  message  and  the  meaning 
for  the  people  of  Britain,  and  for  all  the 
British  peoples  over  all  the  world, — the  real 
meaning  and  the  everlasting  message  of  the 
coronation  ceremonial  in  Westminster  Abbey 
when  George  V  and  Queen  Mary  were 
crowned  on  June  22,  191 1.  They  were 
crowned  for  service.  Their  coronation 
struck  the  true  key-note  of  democracy,  not 
for  themselves  alone,  or  for  their  own  sub- 
jects, but  for  all  the  citizens  of  democracy 
over  all  the  world. 

That  was  indeed  a  great  occasion,  that 
crowning  of  Britain's  young  king  in  the 
midst  of  all  the  splendour  and  all  the  pomp 
and  circumstance  of  world-wide  imperialism 
and  empire.  But  its  real  greatness  was  not 
marked  by  the  emblems  of  world  sovereignty 
which  the  occasion  displayed,  and  the  real 
meaning    of    that    coronation   was   not   ex- 


236         THE   NORTH   AMERICAN   IDEA 

pressed  in  the  ritual  of  anointing  and  investi- 
ture approved  in  the  historic  symbolism  of 
the  Church.  The  abiding  message  of  that 
coronation  ceremonial  and  the  pledge  of  its 
meaning  for  democracy  everywhere  and  in 
all  ages  was  in  the  text  of  the  Coronation 
Sermon,  the  unforgettable  words  of  Jesus  as 
He  drew  near  to  His  own  Coronation  in  the 
infinite  tragedy  of  His  Passion :  "  I  am 
among  you  as  one  that  serves." 

On  that  coronation  day  in  London  all  the 
people,  not  of  Britain  alone,  but  of  all  the 
British  Dominions,  of  all  the  colonies  and  de- 
pendencies of  the  Crown,  and  of  all  the  Brit- 
ish races  and  peoples  that  make  up  more 
than  one-quarter  of  the  entire  human  family, 
they  all  shouted  as  with  one  voice  :  "  God 
save  the  King." 

That  was  in  the  year  191 1.  Coronation 
seemed  to  mean  sovereignty.  It  really 
meant  service.  And  before  the  year  1914 
was  passed  every  British  citizen  had  learned, 
and  learned  in  the  school  of  stern  experience, 
and  by  the  stripes  of  personal  pain  and  sor- 
row, that,  for  the  King,  for  all  his  nobles,  for 


IN   AMERICA'S   INTERNATIONALISM      237 

his  army  and  his  navy,  and  for  every  subject 
who  shared  in  his  coronation,  service  means 
sacrifice.  The  heavy  crown  of  Edward  the 
Confessor,  placed  reverently  on  the  youthful 
head  of  George  V,  had  in  it  the  inevitable 
thorns.  No  one  saw  them  then.  The  blood- 
drops  were  not  visible  to  our  vulgar  eyes. 
But  the  day  came  speedily,  the  great  day  of 
revealing,  when  the  symbolism  of  Coronation 
was  made  plain,  the  day  when  the  British 
army,  the  symbol  of  the  presence  of  Britain's 
power,  stood  up  by  the  side  of  little  Belgium 
on  the  blood-anointed  battle-ground  of  the 
world's  democracy,  and  gave  to  all  the  little 
peoples  of  all  the  world  the  eternal  interpre- 
tation of  the  Coronation  symbol  :  "  I  am 
among  you  as  one  that  serves."  And  from 
that  day  to  this  very  hour  British  soldiers  by 
the  multiplying  million,  and  British  citizens 
by  the  uncounted  millions,  have  been  paying 
the  price  of  sacrifice  on  the  altars  of  the 
world's  democracy. 

And  Britain's  pledge  of  19 14  is  now  Amer- 
ica's pledge  too.  Coronation  for  service 
meant  sacrifice  for  Canada  from  the  begin- 


238         THE  NORTH  AMERICAN  IDEA 

ning.  And  now,  and  on  to  the  very  end,  it 
will  mean  sacrifice  for  the  United  States. 
For  both  our  nations  and  for  all  our  peoples 
the  key-note  of  our  democracy  is  in  the  serv- 
ice that  means  sacrifice.  The  spirit  of  our 
sacrifice  makes  even  the  horror  of  war-service 
a  sacred  thing.  And  so,  with  a  deepening 
sense  of  its  sacredness,  our  two  peoples,  with  a 
new  sense  of  international  brotherhood  in  our 
hearts,  move  forward  on  a  scale  that  is  conti- 
nental and  with  a  courage  nothing  can  ter- 
rify, to  give  reality  in  the  history  of  all  the 
world  to  the  declarations  of  the  North  Amer- 
ican idea  as  expressed  in  the  American  Re- 
public, in  the  Canadian  Dominion,  and  in  the 
unique  international  achievement  on  this 
North  American  continent. 

This  is  my  word  to  you  American  citizens 
in  closing  the  Cole  Lectureship  for  191 7. 
Grateful  am  I  for  your  unexampled  response, 
night  after  night  in  these  great  audiences,  to 
every  appeal  at  all  worthy  either  of  the  theme 
or  of  the  occasion.  As  a  Canadian  I  stand 
with  you  at  every  battle  front  of  the  world's 
mind,  even  as  in  every  day  of  deadly  conflict 


IN   AMERICA'S   INTERNATIONALISM      239 

of  the  world's  armies  Canadian  soldiers  of 
the  Union  Jack  will  stand  shoulder  to  shoul- 
der with  your  sons  of  the  Stars  and  Stripes. 

Canadians  to-day  take  up  the  words  of 
Britain's  great  democratic  Prime  Minister, 
lyloyd  George,  and  with  him  we,  your  neigh- 
bours on  this  continent,  are  proud  and  thank- 
ful to  declare  that :  "  The  advent  of  the 
United  States  into  the  war  gives  the  final 
stamp  to  the  character  of  the  conflict  as  a 
struggle  against  military  autocracy  through- 
out the  world. 

'*  The  United  States  of  America,  of  noble 
tradition  never  broken,  would  never  have 
engaged  in  a  war  except  of  liberty.  This  is 
the  greatest  struggle  for  liberty  your  country 
has  ever  embarked  upon.  I  am  not  at  all 
surprised,  when  one  recollects  the  wars  of  the 
past,  that  America  took  its  time  to  make  up 
its  mind.  Most  of  the  great  wars  in  the  past 
were  waged  for  dynastic  aggrandizement  and 
for  conquest.  It  is  no  wonder  that  when  this 
great  war  started  some  elements  of  suspicion 
still  lurked  in  the  minds  of  the  people  of  the 
United   States,  and  that  many  thought  the 


240         THE  NORTH   AMERICAN   IDEA 

kings  were  at  their  old  tricks.  But  that  the 
United  States  of  America  has  made  up  its 
mind  finally  makes  it  abundandy  clear  that 
this  struggle  is  a  great  fight  for  human  lib- 
erty. America  would  not  have  come  in  were 
not  this  a  great  struggle  for  freedom." 

And  as  a  Canadian,  and  speaking  out  of 
the  heart  of  the  Canadian  people,  in  this  last 
word  of  the  Cole  Lectures  for  this  War  year 
of  191 7,  I  welcome  you,  our  Allies  of  the 
Blood  and  the  Democracy.  Together  we 
shall  stand,  we  shall  fight,  and,  if  needs  be, 
we  shall  die,  in  defense  of  the  North  Amer- 
ican Idea,  the  inalienable  and  priceless  right 
of  a  free  people  to  govern  themselves. 


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